A verdict "for history"?
After three months of hearings as intense as they were chaotic, the Paris Special Assize Court began to render its verdict on Wednesday, December 16, at the trial of 14 alleged supporters of the perpetrators of the January 2015 attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Hide.
From the start of the reading of the deliberation, President Régis de Jorna indicated that the five magistrates who make up the court had ruled out the qualification of terrorist crime for six of the eleven accused present, as requested by their defense by denouncing a file. void of evidence.
This qualification was however retained for the main accused, Ali Riza Polat, who was found guilty of "complicity" in the "terrorist" crimes committed by the Saïd brothers and Chérif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly.
The Advocate General had requested life imprisonment against him.
When the hearing resumed, the defendants, surrounded by numerous police officers, appeared stretched out behind their two glass boxes.
Many civil parties lined the benches of the courtroom for the reading of this historic verdict.
Among them relatives of the victims of the attacks, the ex-hostage of the Hyper Cacher Lassana Bathily, survivors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, its editorial director Riss, Sigolène Vinson and Simon Fieschi.
In an editorial published on Wednesday, the head of the satirical newspaper estimated that once the court's decision has been rendered, "the cycle of violence (...) will have finally closed, at least on the criminal level because, humanly, the repercussions will never fade away. "
In their pleadings, the defense lawyers urged the court not to look "at all costs" for the culprits to compensate for the absence of the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly.
The prosecution for its part asked for sentences "commensurate with the extreme gravity of the facts".
"Master piece"
The three terrorists, shot dead by the security forces on January 9, 2015 after killing 17 people and sowing terror in France, were "nothing" without the defendants, supported the advocates general by calling for sentences ranging from five years to 'imprisonment for life imprisonment.
The heaviest penalties were called for against two alleged "accomplices" in the attacks: Mohamed Belhoucine, tried by default after his departure for Syria, and Ali Riza Polat, presented as the "centerpiece" of the preparatory acts.
Thirty years of criminal imprisonment had been required against Amédy Coulibaly's fleeing companion, Hayat Boumeddiene, and twenty years against Mehdi Belhoucine, who had helped her to leave, both also tried in their absence.
From five to twenty years in prison had been requested for the ten other defendants, suspected of having provided weapons or equipment "knowing the facts of the jihadist commitment" of the perpetrators of the attacks, according to the attorneys general.
"They are the linchpin, the" backbone "of attacks, insisted the magistrates.
In their last words on Monday, before the court withdrew to deliberate after 54 days of debate, these men aged 29 to 68, all already convicted of crimes but never for acts related to terrorism, again affirmed n 'have "nothing to do" with the attacks.
A message supported by their lawyers during their pleadings.
Faced with the shock wave and the trauma of the attacks of January 7, 8 and 9, 2015, the response must be that of "exemplary justice, not bloodthirsty", advocated Me Zoé Royaux.
Supply channels
"It is a file which oozes fear and unreason", underlined his colleague Margot Pugliese, other lawyers having adjured the court to "not give in" to this feeling of "fear", in a context of terrorist threat at the highest.
Three attacks have struck France since the opening of the trial on September 2, including one near the former premises of the satirical weekly.
During the three months of hearings, marked by the powerful testimonies of the survivors and relatives of the victims, the court tried to piece together the puzzle of the investigation that led the defendants to the assizes, essentially on the basis of telephone records and some traces of DNA.
But the debates did not make it possible to remove all the gray areas, from the arms circuit to the sponsors.
Investigators have identified two supply "channels" for the weapons found in Amédy Coulibaly's possession: one "Lille" and the other "Belgian-Ardennes".
But nothing has been established concerning the weapons of war used by the Kouachi brothers.
And how the arsenal passed and then landed in the hands of terrorists remains unclear.
Gray areas "assumed" by the prosecution, which rejected the responsibility on the attitude and the reversals of the accused.
Some 200 people joined the trial, the first in terrorism matters to be fully filmed.
Originally scheduled to end on November 10, it was suspended more than a month after the main defendant, Ali Riza Polat, tested positive for Covid-19 and then suffered from medical complications.
With AFP
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