The superlative process begins in France – WELT – Pledge Times

F.France will never be like it was before January 7, 2015, when Islamist terror struck Paris, forever shattering the certainties of everyday life. 17 people died in three days for being cartoonists or journalists, policemen or Jews, murdered by three men followers of radical Islam.

Five years later, on Wednesday, 14 defendants must answer to the Paris jury for complicity or membership in a terrorist group. The verdict expires on November 10.

Because the process is considered “historical”, it is videotaped and archived, something that has only happened a few times in French history.

But in the French media there is talk of a “trial of the knives of the second row”, of one of the henchmen who is blown to a historical event, but will not be able to bring reparation to the victims and relatives of the murdered woman.

Because the three main perpetrators, the terrorists, are dead, shot by special forces on the run or during the taking of hostages. Only the henchmen who got cars, guns and ammunition have to answer.

Your profile? Born in the 80s and raised in the Parisian suburbs. Little criminals as pale as you often see them in Parisian courts.

Will it be possible to demonstrate its radicalization and ideological proximity to the terrorists? Will they be judged more harshly on behalf of absent perpetrators who can no longer pay for their actions?

Many questions arise before the process. Also if there is an imbalance between the importance given to the victims of the attacks: on the one hand, the journalists and cartoonists killed by “Charlie Hebdo”, on the other hand, the people who were killed or taken hostage in the attack on the supermarket Jewish “Hyper Cacher”.

So far, only one thing is certain: it will be a superlative process. 49 trial days are scheduled, the trial material comprises 171 volumes. 200 plaintiffs, nearly 100 lawyers and 90 journalists will be at the scene, some of whom will only be able to view the proceedings on screens in adjoining rooms due to the crown’s distance rules.

After the trials of Nazi criminals Maurice Papon, Klaus Barbie, and Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, it is the twelfth trial in French judicial history to be filmed for the archives.

However, the murderers of “Charlie Hebdo”, the brothers Cherif and Saīd Kouachi, managed to cover their tracks. The 14 defendants, who will answer in court from Wednesday, have to explain their closeness to Amedy Coulibaly, the killer of the kosher supermarket “Hyper Cacher” who murdered six people.

Patrick Klugman, one of the attorneys for the “Hyper Cacher” hostages, believes the view that this is just an indirect “second knife” judgment is incorrect.

“Collective loss of unconcern”

“We are certainly facing a historical process because we will judge the events that will change things for Paris, France and ultimately for the whole world, because collectively we have lost our lightness, our carelessness and probably some freedom,” says Klugman in conversation with RONCHA.

The trial is also proof that the terrorists have not won, “because we respond to terror with right and justice. That is proof of our resilience and the strength of our democracy ”.

Many of Klugman’s clients, however, feel like “double victims”: “They were victims of hostage-taking, but now they are also victims of oblivion”, because now one has become used to the “murdered Jews” and the attack. Against them. freedom of expression Klugman regrets that the attack on the “Charlie Hebdo” newsroom has left deeper traces in the collective memory.

“The Jews of France feel abandoned,” Klugman said. “When Jews are attacked or killed, it is a red flag that means more. I am very sorry that society did not want to understand these signs. “

There were also bleak omens for “Charlie Hebdo.” The death threats against the cartoonists began in 2006. But despite one thing, arson attack The editorial team did not take the threat to freedom of expression posed by radical Islamists very seriously.

For almost a decade, niche discussions about Mohamed’s lackluster cartoons took place in Danish newspapers and it wasn’t until the bloody attack in January 2015 that many eyes were opened that these were targeted attacks on press freedom and freedom of expression. and a war against democratic systems.

“I’d rather die standing than live on my knees”

A few days before the opening of the trial, French President Emmanuel Macron described the right to blasphemy, which does not exist in all countries, as a “national treasure that means a lot to us.”

On Rue Nicolas Appert, not far from the Bastille in Paris, a graffiti on the wall of the old editorial office reminds us of the eleven people who were murdered in the rooms of “Charlie Hebdo”. Below is a quote from editor-in-chief Charb, who argues that the right to blasphemy is first against Catholics, then against defended Islamic fundamentalists: “I would rather die standing than live on my knees.”

“The attack was an electric shock,” says feminist journalist Caroline Fourest, who worked for “Charlie Hebdo” until 2009. But in her eyes society has bitterly failed.

Fourest calls for a “broad social debate on the complicity that made the drama possible”: the complicity of radical preachers, but also that of the French left and the Anglo-American press, the Critique of Islam does not allow it. For fear of promoting Islamophobia.

“We did not offer enough intellectual resistance to this ideology,” Fourest complains in an interview with WELT. She calls for a “process of the knives of the third row, the ideologues that sow hatred.”

Not only were the three main culprits deprived of their responsibility on Wednesday. Three of the 14 defendants will also be absent. You are on the run or maybe dead too.

The secret services suspect that two of them died in bomb attacks against the strongholds of the terrorist organization IS (Islamic State). Hayat Boumedienne, the partner of the “Hyper Cacher” killer and France’s most prominent jihadist, could be hiding under a false identity.

He is scheduled to be in Syria in October 2019 in the Al-Hol refugee camp, from which he allegedly fled according to testimony.

The Paris attacks of January 2015 mark a turning point. They marked the beginning of a long series of Islamist terror attacks in which 317 people were killed and countless wounded in France over the past five years and eight months.

The French were able to rule out as an exception the attacks on the Jewish school in Toulouse and the murder of three soldiers in 2012. But then the brutality knew no bounds: a few weeks after the attacks against “Charlie Hebdo” and the “Hyper Cacher”, a A woman was killed and an employee beheaded the head of a company.

The attacks on the concert hall followed in November of the same year at Bataclan, the Parisian Bistrots and the Stade de France.

In 2016, a couple of police officers had their throats slit in front of their young son on their own four walls. A little later, the attack on the Nice seafront, in which 86 people died.

In 2017, a police officer in Paris and two young women in Marseille were killed. In 2018, three people died while being held hostage in a supermarket in Trèbes, in southern France. One man was killed in a knife attack, five in the Strasbourg Christmas market.

The latest attack took place on October 3 last year when four people were killed by one of his colleagues in the Paris police prefecture.