French court finds Charlie Hebdo attack accomplices guilty

A French court has found guilty 14 accomplices of the attackers behind the January 2015 attacks on the French Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

Among the 14 was Hayat Boumeddiene, former partner of Amedy Coulibaly who killed a policewoman and then four people in a Jewish supermarket.

One of three suspects to be tried in absentia, Boumeddiene was found guilty of financing “terrorism” and belonging to a criminal “terrorist” network. She is thought to be alive and on the run from an international arrest warrant in Syria, where she joined ISIL (ISIS).

Coulibaly was himself an associate of the gunmen behind the deadly attack at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.

The accomplices were found guilty on different charges, ranging from membership of a criminal network to complicity in the attacks. Terrorism-related charges were dropped for several of the defendants who were found guilty of lesser crimes.

Sentencing will follow shortly. Prosecutors have demanded sentences of between five years and life for the alleged accomplices.

The trial has reopened one of modern France’s darkest episodes, with the attacks marking the onset of a wave of violence that has killed scores more since.

The three days of attacks in Paris began on January 7, 2015, with the killing of 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, which had published derogatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The assault at the weekly satirical magazine was followed by the shooting of a French policewoman on January 8, and an attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, in the south of Paris, a day later.

The three attackers had links with al-Qaeda and ISIL and were shot dead by police in separate standoffs.