Fourteen accomplices who helped to facilitate the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attack were found guilty by a French court Wednesday.
The fourteen people were found guilty of helping to arrange, finance and support the attacks carried out by Amedy Coulibaly and brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, according to Sky News. The three attackers were killed by police shortly after the incidents.
Charlie Hebdo trial: Fourteen found guilty of being accomplices in 2015 terror attackshttps://t.co/Vs7xJOLXkP pic.twitter.com/7xUBw6KOxX
— BBC News (@ravi095980674) December 16, 2020
All of them claimed loyalty to the Islamic State, Sky reported. The January 2015 attacks on the office of the satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket killed 17 people. (RELATED: France Proposes Sweeping New Law To Crack Down On Islamic Extremism)
Of the fourteen accomplices convicted Wednesday, eleven stood trial in-person. The remaining three are thought to have fled to Syria after the attacks, and two of the three may have been killed by bombing attacks against the Islamic State, according to Sky.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was carried out in response to cartoons it published mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Depictions of the prophet are strictly forbidden by many strains of the Islamic faith.
Schoolteacher Samuel Paty was beheaded earlier this year in retaliation after he showed some of his students the same cartoons in a discussion about free speech. Europe has seen several violent Islamic terror attacks in recent months, including in France and Austria.