G’BYE, FIENDS
All terrorists in French massacre convicted
All 14 defendants charged in the terrorist attacks against French newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Paris kosher store were found guilty Wednesday, nearly six years after the massacres left 17 people dead and shocked the world.
Three of the defendants were tried in absentia, including the fugitive widow of ISIS gunman Amédy Coulibaly, who was killed at the end of a hostage crisis inside a Jewish supermarket — two days after gunmen stormed the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication that has long angered religious extremists.
ISIS and Al Qaeda jointly claimed responsibility shortly after the attacks in early January 2015.
The 11 men who were present at the three-month trial received sentences ranging from four to 30 years in prison.
Two defendants who helped Coulibaly’s widow, Hayat
Boumeddiene, flee to Syria after the attack are believed to be dead but were sentenced to life in prison just in case. Boumeddiene is thought to still be alive.
The verdict ends a tense court proceeding marked by new terror attacks and a wave of COVID-19 infections among the defendants. It also ends a painful chapter in France as the country tries to recover from the horrific attacks.
The bloodshed in 2015 began during an editorial staff meeting at Charlie Hebdo’s offices, where brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi opened fire in an act of revenge for the paper’s cartoon portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
One of the survivors, cartoonist
Corinne Rey, took the witness stand at the trial and recalled how she watched the pair kill 12 of her colleagues.
“I was not killed, but what happened to me was absolutely cchilling and I wwill live with it uuntil my life is oover,” she told tthe special terrrorism court.
As a manhhunt was undderway in the ccity over the nnext few days, CCoulibaly fatallly shot a police oofficer and then sstormed a Jewiish store armed wwith explosives, pistols and an assault rifle.
“You are Jews and French, the two things I hate the most,” Coulibaly said as he took the terrified customers hostages before killing four of them.
Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers were ultimately cornered and shot dead by police.
Islamic extremists terrorized France again as the trial got underway this fall.
In late September, a radicalized Pakistani man wounded two people with a butcher’s knife just outside the former Charlie Hebdo headquarters. Weeks later, a Chechen refugee beheaded a French teacher who had shown caricatures of Muhammad to his students.
On Oct. 30, a knife-wielding Tunisian man carrying a copy of the Koran and shouting “Allahu akbar” — God is greatest — attacked worshipers in a church in Nice, killing three, including a woman who was decapitated.
Wednesday’s verdicts closed one chapter of terror.
“This is the end of a trial that’s been crazy, illuminating, painful but which has been useful,” said Richard Malka, a lawyer for Charlie Hebdo.