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PARIS (Reuters) – Fourteen suspected accomplices of French Islamist militants behind the 2015 attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris are on trial Wednesday.
The perpetrators and alleged accomplices include:
CHERIF AND SAID KOUACHI
Cherif Kouachi and her brother Said were in their 30s when they broke into Charlie Hebdo’s office on January 7, 2015. Armed with automatic rifles, they killed 12 people, including some of France’s best-known cartoonists.
A two-day manhunt was ensured. The brothers were killed when police broke into their hideout at a printing press northeast of Paris.
Before going radical, Cherif delivered pizzas and dreamed of rapping. His religious beliefs hardened after he met Farid Benyettou, a Salafist who led a cell known as the Buttes-Chaumont group that sent a dozen young men to Iraq.
Police arrested Cherif as he prepared to fly to Syria en route to Iraq in 2005. He spent 18 months in jail.
AMEDY COULIBALY
Amedy Coulibaly shot and killed a policewoman 24 hours after the attack on Charlie Hebdo. A day later, on January 9, the 32-year-old man was killed by security forces during a siege at a Jewish supermarket that claimed the lives of four hostages.
In a video later posted online, Coulibaly said he had acted on behalf of the Islamic State. He said that he had planned the attacks together with the Kouachi brothers.
The attacks were justified by French military interventions abroad, he said.
HAYAT BOUMEDIENNE
Hayat Boumedienne, Coulibaly’s partner at the time of the attack, is one of three of the 14 alleged accomplices who will be tried in absentia. It is not known if she is alive or dead.
She fled to Syria via Spain and Turkey days before the attacks with two other defendants, Mohamed and Mehdi Belhoucine. Investigators say he joined the Islamic State in the Iraq-Syria region.
Boumedienne is accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and financing of terrorism. The charges carry a maximum of 20 years in jail.
BELHOUCINE MOHAMED
Mohamed Belhoucine faces the most serious charge against any of the 14 accused of complicity in terror and a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Investigators allege that he helped Coulibaly prepare his attack, including by providing the email addresses of militant contacts, as well as the video in which he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.
ALI RIZA POLAT
Investigators allege that Ali Riza Polat, a 35-year-old Frenchman of Turkish descent, was aware of the attackers’ intentions and helped the three men accumulate their arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
Polat is also accused of participation in a terrorist network and complicity in the crimes committed by Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers. He faces life in prison if convicted.
PETER CHERIF
Peter Cherif, also known as Abou Hamza, is suspected by investigators of ordering the attack on Charlie Hebdo, according to law enforcement and security sources.
Cherif will be called to testify in the case regarding Al Qaeda’s role in the Arabian Peninsula in the shootings.
Cherif fought with al Qaeda in Fallujah, Iraq, and was detained in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and then in Mosul, from where he escaped, according to a French investigation into the Buttes-Chaumont cell.
In the 2010s he spent time in Yemen until he was arrested in Djibouti by French and American agents in 2018.
He was transferred to France where he remains in prison awaiting trial on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.
Report by Tangi Salaun; Editing by Richard Lough and Giles Elgood
