Terror threat ‘very high’ as Charlie Hebdo trial begins

THE terror threat in France remains “very high”, with 8,000 people on the watchlist, the interior minister said yesterday, on the eve of the trial of the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

French interior minister Gérald Darminin warned of the threat, notably from Sunni extremists, as the authorities said that at least half a dozen plots have been foiled this year so far.

He was speaking as France prepared to stage its first trial since the attacks on the offices of the satirical magazine in 2015.

On January 7 of that year, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, including cartoonists, other office staff and a police officer in eastern Paris. In the two ensuing days, another French Islamist, Amédy Coulibaly, killed policewoman Clarissa Jean-philippe in a southern suburb and murdered another four people in a Jewish supermarket just east of the capital. At first, authorities insisted there was no link between the assailants, but it later transpired they had coordinated their attacks for the Islamic State group.

Although all three gunmen were shot dead in the aftermath, some 14 people will stand trial on Wednesday in connection with the killings, in the first such case since the 2015 onslaught and subsequent terror attacks. Eleven of the accused were swiftly arrested but three vanished in Syria and will be tried in absentia.

Over 49 days, more than 140 witnesses will be heard in a case seen by victims and families as a legal landmark over the killings that shocked France and the world. It will be filmed for the country’s state archives.