A Paris court begins to examine appeals of two of 14 people found guilty at first instance of complicity in the attacks
Seven years and eight months after the spate of jihadist attacks in Paris in January 2015, a Paris court began this Monday to examine the appeals of two of the 14 convicts who challenged the first conviction. The decision will be announced on October 21.
These attacks were the starting point of a wave of jihadist attacks in France. Three Islamic terrorists – the brothers Said and Chérif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly – killed 17 people between 7 and 9 January 2015 in three attacks: the massacre in the offices of the satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’, the taking of hostages in the Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher and the murder of a policewoman in Montrouge, on the outskirts of Paris.
The three terrorists could not be brought to justice. They were killed by the police after the attack. But 14 of his accomplices were prosecuted in December 2020 and sentenced to sentences ranging from four years to life in prison for their role in preparing the attacks.
After their appeal, two of the defendants sit back in the dock: Ali Riza Polat and Amar Ramdani, friends of Amedy Colibaly, the Montrouge terrorist and Hyper Chacher. Polat was sentenced at first instance to 30 years in prison for “complicity in murder” and Ramdadi to 20 years in prison for “association of criminals for terrorist purposes”. Both continue to proclaim their innocence.
The Kalashnikov attack on ‘Charlie Hebdo’ was an act of revenge by the Kouachi brothers after the weekly had published the controversial cartoons of Mohammed in 2006. After the attack, the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’ (I am Charlie) traveled the world in solidarity with the victims of the massacre and in defense of freedom of expression.
Richard Malka, a lawyer for ‘Charlie Hebdo’, explained in statements to France Info that in this second trial, his job is to “try to go further in analyzing the causes of the attacks and how to combat them. The answer must, of course, be a judicial one, but that is not how we will win this battle, which is primarily a battle of ideas.
Malka felt that this battle of ideas is “unfortunately still a hot topic”, as evidenced by the case of British writer Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial book ‘Satanic Verses’. Rushdie, against whom Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989, was stabbed during a lecture in the United States last August.
Source: La Verdad
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