Accomplices in the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and journalists go to trial on September 2

"I am Charlie," photographed in Bochum, Germany, in early 2015.

I was living in Bochum, Germany in early January 2015, when the offices of Charlie Hebdo were attacked by Islamist terrorists and twelve members of the staff were murdered. The next day, a kosher market in Paris was attacked and four patrons were murdered by other Islamist terrorists. Tendance Coatsey reports that they have just republished the caricatures of Muhammad that got them into so much trouble in 2006.

From the France 24 article on the republication -

French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015, said Tuesday it was republishing hugely controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to mark this week's start of the trial of alleged accomplices to the attack. 

"We will never lie down. We will never give up," director Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau wrote in an editorial to go with the cartoons in the latest edition. 

"The hatred that struck us is still there and, since 2015, it has taken the time to mutate, to change its appearance, to go unnoticed and to quietly continue its ruthless crusade," he said.

Twelve people, including some of France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the paper's offices in Paris. 

The perpetrators were killed in the wake of the massacre but 14 alleged accomplices in the attacks, which also targeted a Jewish supermarket, will go on trial in Paris on Wednesday. 

The latest Charlie Hebdo cover shows a dozen cartoons first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005 -- and then reprinted by the French weekly in 2006, unleashing a storm of anger across the Muslim world. 

In the centre of the cover is a cartoon of the prophet drawn by cartoonist Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, who lost his life in the massacre. 

"All of this, just for that," the front-page headline says. 

The trial starts tomorrow at 8:00 am GMT. "The suspects ... are accused of providing various degrees of logistical support to the killers."

The court in Paris will sit until November 10 and, in a first for a terror trial, proceedings will be filmed for archival purposes given public interest.

National anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard dismissed the idea that it was just "little helpers" going on trial since the three gunmen were now dead. 

"It is about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of the events, who provided means of financing, operational material, weapons, a residence," he told France Info radio on Monday. 

"All this is essential to the terrorist action."

My blogposts on Charlie Hebdo from 2015 -

https://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2015/01/on-charlie-hebdo-islamophobia-and-racism.html
https://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2015/01/on-murders-in-paris.html
https://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2015/01/mistaken-assumptions-about-murders-at.html