France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine will REPUBLISH Mohammed cartoons for start of terror trial

French magazine Charlie Hebdo will REPUBLISH cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as trial into 2015 terrorist gun rampage that left 12 dead gets underway

France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine will republish its controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as 14 people go on trial over the 2015 terror attack at the paper’s offices. 

‘We will never lie down. We will never give up,’ director Laurent Sourisseau wrote in an editorial to go with the cartoons. 

Twelve people were killed in the gun rampage in January 2015, while five others died in related attacks in the following two days.  

The trial of 14 alleged accomplices begins in Paris tomorrow.   

A message of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo – containing the popular slogan ‘je suis Charlie’ (meaning ‘I am Charlie’) – is laid out in Paris after the attack in 2015 

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

The following day, Amedy Coulibaly, an acquaintance of Cherif Kouachi, killed a female police officer. 

On January 9, he killed four Jewish men at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.

The three attackers were killed by police in separate standoffs.

In a video recording, Coulibaly said the attacks were coordinated and carried out in the name of the so-called Islamic State.   

The alleged accomplices have been charged with crimes including supplying weapons, membership of a terrorist organisation and financing terrorism.

Of the 14 defendants, three will be tried in absentia and may be dead. 

Hayat Boumedienne, Coulibaly’s partner at the time of the attack, and brothers Mohamed and Mehdi Belhoucine are believed to have travelled to areas of Syria under the control of ISIS just before the attacks.

Among those in the dock will be Ali Riza Polat who investigators allege helped the three attackers amass their weapons. He faces life in jail if found guilty.