Five years ago this January gunmen stormed the office of the satirical cartoon newspaper and slaughtered the people there for daring to publish cartoons of Mohamed. Three of them fled the country and are believed to be in Syria, they are being tried in abstentia. One went on to murder a police officer at a traffic check the next day, then on to murder four at a Jewish market on the day following. The man responsible for the last two attacks was killed in the police storming of the market. Eleven people are on trial for the attack for directly committing it or supporting those that did.
Two of the three who escaped to Syria are believed to have been killed fighting alongside with ISIS. Arrest warrants are outstanding on all three.
The trial is expected to last two and a half months, 150 expert witnesses are to be called.
The phrase Je Suis Charlie, or I Am Charlie, was popularized from this event.
That July my wife and I were celebrating our tenth anniversary by taking a river cruise from Prague to Berlin. We flew in and out of Berlin to spend more time there, whereas the norm was to fly in to the origin city and out of the destination city, so we took a train from Berlin to Prague, a very nice 2 or 3 hour ride. It stopped on the border to change crew and take on more passengers.
On the side of a warehouse-type building was a large graffiti of Je Suis Charlie. It was quite moving.
It will be nice to see justice meted out to these terrorists, and some closure to the survivors of the victims.
Here's an article on the start of the trial, slated to run to mid-November:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200902-charlie-hebdo-terror-attack-accomplices-trial-starts-in-parisAnd a cartoon, from the web strip Jesus and Mo:
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