World News | IS Widow Convicted in Charlie Hebdo, Kosher Market Attacks
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. The fugitive widow of an Islamic State gunman and a man described as his logistician on Wednesday were convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison in the trial of 14 people linked to the January 2015 attacks in Paris against the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket.
Paris, Dec 16 (AP) The fugitive widow of an Islamic State gunman and a man described as his logistician on Wednesday were convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison in the trial of 14 people linked to the January 2015 attacks in Paris against the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket.
The verdict ends the three-month trial linked to the three days of killings across Paris claimed jointly by the Islamic State group and al-Qaida.
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During the proceedings, France was struck by new attacks, a wave of coronavirus infections among the defendants, and devastating testimony bearing witness to bloodshed that continues to shake France.
All three attackers died in police raids. The widow, Hayat Boumeddiene, fled to Syria and is believed to still be alive.
The two men who spirited her out of France, who were also tried in absentia, are thought to be dead, although one received a sentence of life in prison just in case.
Eleven others were present and all were convicted of the crime, with sentences ranging from 30 years for Ali Riza Polat, described as the lieutenant of the virulently anti-Semitic market attacker, Amédy Coulibaly, to four years with a simple criminal conviction.
The January 7-9, 2015 attacks in Paris left 17 dead along with the three gunmen. The 11 on trial in a specially formed terrorism court, all men, formed a loose circle of friends and criminal acquaintances who claimed any facilitating they may have done was unwitting or for more run-of-the mill crime like armed robbery.
One gambled day and night during the three-day period, learning what had happened only after emerging blearily from the casino.
Another was a pot-smoking ambulance driver. A third was a childhood friend of the market attacker, who got beaten to a pulp by the latter over a debt.
It was the coronavirus infection of Polat, who arranged the weapons and vehicle purchases, that forced the suspension of the trial for a month.
Polat's profane outbursts and insults drew rebukes from the chief judge.
A handwriting expert testified it was Polat who scrawled a price list of arms and munitions.
In all, investigators sifted through 37 million bits of phone data, according to video testimony by judicial police.
Among the men cuffed behind the courtroom's enclosed stands, flanked by masked and armed officers, were several who had exchanged dozens of texts or calls with Coulibaly in the days leading up to the attack.
Also testifying were the widows of Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the brothers who stormed Charlie Hebdo's offices on January 7, 2015, decimating the newspaper's editorial staff in what they said was an act of vengeance for its publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad years before.
The offices had been firebombed before and were unmarked, and editors had round-the-clock protection. But it wasn't enough.
In all, 12 people died that day. The first was Frédéric Boisseau, who worked in maintenance.
Then the Kouachis seized Corinne Rey, a cartoonist who had gone down to smoke, and forced her upstairs to punch in the door code. She watched in horror as they opened fire on the editorial meeting.
"I was not killed, but what happened to me was absolutely chilling and I will live with it until my life is over," she testified.
The next day, Coulibaly shot and killed a young policewoman after failing to attack a Jewish community center in the suburb of Montrouge. By then, the Kouachis were on the run and France was paralyzed with fear.
Authorities didn't link the shooting to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo immediately. They were closing in on the fugitive brothers when the first alerts came of a gunman inside a kosher supermarket.
It was a wintry Friday afternoon, and customers were rushing to finish their shopping before the Sabbath when Coulibaly entered, carrying an assault rifle, pistols and explosives.
With a GoPro camera fixed to his torso, he methodically fired on an employee and a customer, then killed a second customer before ordering a cashier to close the store's metal blinds, images shown to a hushed courtroom.
The first victim, Yohan Cohen, lay dying on the ground and Coulibaly turned to some 20 hostages and asked if he should "finish him off."(AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)