A life sentence and two 30-year sentences for accomplices in the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine

The trial that since September tried those who helped commit the January 2015 attacks in Paris, in which 17 people died, 12 of them in the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine, ended this Wednesday with sentences ranging from four years to life imprisonment. Eleven of the 14 accused of providing logistical, financial or material support to the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, responsible for the attack on the weekly, and Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a police officer and then four people in a Jewish supermarket, had been seated in the dock of the Special Criminal Court.

These attacks between January 7 and 9 were the first in a wave of jihadist attacks on French soil that have since killed more than 250 people, and their trial, considered historic from the start, focused on their collaborators because the three perpetrators were killed by the police. The harshest sentence, a life sentence, was handed down against Mohamed Belhoucine, one of the three defendants who were wanted and captured, whom the authorities believe died fighting in Syria and who is considered Coulibaly's mentor.

The widow of the latter terrorist, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is also believed to have escaped to Syria, was sentenced to 30 years. The other sentence of 30 years was for Ali Riza Polat, the only direct accomplice of the three attackers and also the main convicted person present in the courtroom. The French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office had requested sentences of 5 to 20 years for the rest of those involved, and the court did not comply with that request, considering that the participation of six of the defendants present in a criminal association of malefactors was not for terrorist purposes.

Three days of coordinated attacks

The first attack, by Charlie Hebdo, was perpetrated by the Kouachi brothers on January 7. A day later, coordinated with them, Coulibaly killed a police woman and the next day held a dozen people in a Jewish supermarket and killed four. The president of the court considered this Wednesday that the three terrorists acted in a "concerted and synchronized" manner, were associated both "materially and psychologically" and can therefore be considered co-authors of these events.
 

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack by the Kouachi brothers and the Islamic State those of Coulibaly, whose victims were not chosen at random: a satirical magazine threatened for having published caricatures of Mohammed, a police officer and the Jewish community, which magnified the social impact of the actions. The expectation for this process was therefore very high and also lived up to the figures it has handled: 141 volumes of proceedings, 200 parties constituted as private accusations, 94 lawyers, 144 witnesses summoned to testify and 70 accredited media, 20 of them foreigners.

But the trial was seen for sentencing on Monday without having allowed all the unknowns to be cleared up and with the constant complaint of the defense of the accused, for whom their clients were seen from the beginning as presumed guilty. "What the verdict reflects is that without that nebula of people more or less close to the terrorists there is no attack. That anyone who participates in that nebula can be severely punished," said Charlie Hebdo's lawyer, Richard Malka, at the end of the session.

The decision "will not bring anyone back to life, but it may prevent other attacks from being committed," added the lawyer, one of the most prominent figures in France in defense of freedom of expression, who said that he came to the trial "not in a spirit of revenge, but with a desire for justice. The role of these secondary actors and the question of the extent to which an attack can be judged when its direct perpetrators have died has not been the only debate that has arisen in these months of proceedings.

A historic process

The right to blasphemy and anti-Semitism have also been the subject of intense hearings, which were suspended for nearly a month because of several cases of covidship among the accused, and which coincided with three other jihadist attacks committed in France since September. The magnitude of the process, which according to the defense of the defendants has prevented a fair trial due to the large number of individual charges brought as a civil party, also lays the groundwork for the next ones.

The next one, from September 2021 to March 2002, will be that of the attacks of November 13, 2015, which left 130 dead and 350 wounded in Paris and the adjacent town of Saint-Denis. But the conclusion of this first one allows to start closing wounds. Michel Catalano, owner of the printing press where the Kouachi brothers barricaded themselves before being shot, said on Wednesday that he was only waiting for the end of the day "to be able to turn the page".