Charlie Hebdo trial reveals those involved in terrorist networks in France

Nahla Abdel Moneim

On Sunday, December 20, the French authorities announced the arrest of four citizens of Pakistani descent for their involvement in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper days after 14 people were convicted by a French court in the first Charlie Hebdo incident in 2015.

The events related to the Charlie Hebdo attack caused widespread confusion in France and the Islamic world as well, prompting Paris to make successive moves that revealed many terrorist networks, whether operating on the ground to implement the agenda of Islamist organizations or those used for financing at home and abroad, or even sympathizers with their strategies as lone wolves.

On January 9, 2015, extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda carried out an attack on the headquarters of the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper due to cartoons insulting to the Islamic religion and the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) published by the newspaper. The most prominent of the accused in this case were Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who are brothers of Algerian descent.

On the occasion of the start of the trial of those involved in the 2015 attack, the newspaper reprinted the offensive cartoons, which the extremists used again to attack the building. On September 25, 2020, they carried out a knife attack against two in the vicinity of the newspaper’s old building.

The trial continued until it was announced on December 17, that 14 people were convicted in the case, including 11 who attended the trial and three people in absentia, most notably Hayat Boumeddiene, a friend of Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed in connection with those attacks in Paris in 2015, as the court stigmatized her as a partner in the case through funding and belonging to an extremist network, but days before the attack was carried out, she traveled to Syria, and the nature of her life or death has not yet been established.

Among those convicted in absentia, the BBC reported that Mohamed Belhoucine and his brother Mehdi were found guilty of providing logistical and jurisprudential assistance in order to carry out a series of operations in which al-Qaeda was involved over a period of two days on January 5 and 7, 2015. The court considered that Ali Riza Polat, 35 years old, was the main suspect and sentenced him to 30 years imprisonment, noting that Polat was Coulibaly’s right-hand man and played a pivotal role in the preparation of the attacks. Among those sentenced on charges of belonging to terrorist organizations and carrying out attacks during that trial were Amar Ramdani, Nezar Mickaël Pastor Alwatik, Saïd Makhlouf and other persons from Belgium who participated in the crime.

Charlie Hebdo and terrorist networks

It seems that the trial and the accompanying events have contributed to the disclosure of terrorist networks living in France and threatening its national security, as the country’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office announced that the four Pakistanis arrested as part of security campaigns to undermine terrorist networks were involved in the knife attack carried out by extremists in the vicinity of the old building of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper on September 25, 2020, which resulted in two injuries.

The suspects are aged between 17 and 21 years, and they were related to the planner of the attack, and they stayed in separate areas, including Paris and the Gironde district in the southwest of the country and Caen in the north.

On September 29, 2020, the French authorities arrested 29 people for forming a network to fund extremist groups via cryptocurrencies. France believes that they are affiliated with al-Qaeda and that they are sending money to militants in Syria and Iraq, but the accused have denied this, explaining that the money was sent to the children of displacement camps.

Consequently, the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the recent trial that took place in their wake contributed to uncovering terrorist networks on French soil, proving that extremism has not yet ended and that the lack of frequent attacks does not mean their disappearance.