The Paris Assize trial of the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, Montrouge and the Hyper Cacher, postponed due to restrictions linked to the coronavirus, will be held from September 2 to November 10, AFP learned on Tuesday anti-terrorist (Pnat).
This emblematic trial was initially scheduled to take place from May 4 to July 10. It had been postponed last week because the president of the Assize Court had considered that it was not possible to maintain it "in sufficiently satisfactory sanitary conditions".
Fourteen suspects to appear
Fourteen suspects must appear before a special assize court which will sit, for logistical reasons, at the new Paris court, Porte de Clichy, and not, as usual, in the courthouse on the Ile de la Cité .
They are suspected of varying degrees of logistical support for the brothers Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly, perpetrators of the attacks which targeted the writing of Charlie Hebdo, a municipal policewoman in Montrouge and the Paris supermarket Hyper Cacher, killing 17.
It will be the first trial organized for a jihadist attack committed in France since the one held in 2017 for the killings perpetrated by Mohamed Merah five years earlier. On January 7, 2015, the Chérif brothers and Saïd Kouachi killed 12 people in the attack on the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris before fleeing. The next day, Amédy Coulibaly killed a municipal policewoman in Montrouge, near Paris, then on January 9, he killed four men, all Jewish, during the hostage-taking of the Hyper Cacher store in eastern Paris. He died on the spot in a police assault, the Kouachi brothers having been killed shortly before in a printing house where they had entrenched themselves, in Dammartin-en-Goële, in Seine-et-Marne.
The trial will be filmed
The fourteen accused will be tried by a special assize court, composed only of magistrates, but three of them, targeted by an arrest warrant, are missing. Their death in the Iraqi-Syrian zone, mentioned by several sources, has never been officially confirmed.
At the request of Pnat, this trial will be filmed. The capture of images and recordings during trials is in principle prohibited in France, but since the Badinter law of 1985, it can be authorized if it "is of interest for the constitution of historical archives of justice".