Attraction trial of the assaults in opposition to Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher

Greater than seven and a half years after the assaults on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher retailer, the attraction trial of two alleged supporters of the perpetrators of the jihadist assaults opened Monday morning in Paris. Each males dispute any connection to the assaults.

For 3 days, from January 7 to 9, 2015, the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly carried the jihadist battle on French soil, in opposition to freedom of expression, the police and the Jewish group, and killed 17 individuals, together with cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski. Their murderous and coordinated journey had ended with their loss of life throughout a double police assault.

The president of the particular assize court docket ruling on attraction, Jean-Christophe Hullin, declared the listening to open round 10:10 a.m. The court docket started by verifying the id of the 2 defendants, then the constitutions of civil events.

Solely a small a part of the practically 300 civil events came about within the courtroom. Amongst them, the director of the publication of Charlie Hebdo, Riss, injured within the assault in opposition to the editorial workers, the ex-columnist Sigolène Vinson, additionally a survivor of the assault, or the ex-hostage of Hyper Cacher Lassana Bathily.

Diploma of duty to be established

The 2 defendants, two kinfolk of Amedy Coulibaly, are retried two years after their first trial. The court docket can have till October 21 to weigh the diploma of duty of every within the preparation of the assaults.

Ali Riza Polat, a 37-year-old Franco-Turk in opposition to whom the heaviest costs weigh and who faces life imprisonment, had marked the primary ‘historic’ listening to along with his outbursts and his invectives. The judges had sentenced him to thirty years’ imprisonment for complicity in crimes dedicated by the Kouachi and Coulibaly.

Amar Ramdani had acquired the utmost sentence of 20 years in jail for felony terrorist affiliation. Each males have all the time disputed any connection to the assaults.

Shadow areas

The primary morning of the listening to was to be dedicated to the examination of procedural questions. The protection of Ali Riza Polat intends particularly to request the exploitation of paperwork uncared for in response to her on the time by the investigators. Then the court docket will take a look at the persona parts of the 2 defendants, earlier than beginning to study the info, from Tuesday.

The titanic investigation and the debates within the first occasion didn’t make it potential to dissipate all the grey areas surrounding the assaults, from the arms circuit to the sponsors of the killings dedicated within the title of Al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula (Aqpa) for the Kouachi and the Islamic State (IS) for Coulibaly.

Ali Riza Polat is notably suspected of getting organized the seek for weapons for Amedy Coulibaly, a local like him of Grigny (Essonne), and of getting intervened in any respect levels of the preparations for the assaults, which he rejects as an entire.

‘Appropriate the errors’

‘This trial would be the final alternative to appropriate the errors of a judicial chain overwhelmed by the dimensions of those assaults, and to return to phrases with the precise position of Mr. Polat, a typical legislation offender to whom we wrongly attributed a task that he by no means performed”, consider his attorneys, Moad Nefati and Rachid Madid.

Amar Ramdani is accused of getting provided weapons to Amedy Coulibaly, whom he had recognized in jail, and of getting financed the assaults, which he defends himself.

About 80 witnesses are summoned to look. Amongst them, nearly all of the 9 males definitively sentenced on the finish of the trial which was held within the fall of 2020, to sentences starting from 4 to 18 years in jail. None of them had appealed.

The kinfolk of the victims and the survivors of the assaults are anticipated from Thursday on the bar, from the place they’ll convey to life the horror of the crimes which decimated the editorial workers of the satirical newspaper, killed a municipal police officer in Montrouge, in addition to clients and staff. of a Jewish comfort retailer.

/ATS