Anti-terrorism investigating judges on Monday March 25 ordered a trial before a special juvenile court for six men concerning the chopper attack in front of the former Charlie Hebdo premises in September 2020, Agence France-Presse learned from a source close to the case.
Concerning this attack on rue Nicolas-Appert, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, which seriously injured two current and former employees of the Premières Lignes press agency, the assailant, Zaheer Mahmoud, a 29-year-old Pakistani who arrived in France in 2018 , will be tried for attempted terrorist assassinations. The other five men will be accused of criminal terrorist association.
Three of them being minors at the time of the events, the trial will be held before the juvenile court specially composed for the occasion. On the other hand, a dismissal of the case was pronounced for a seventh man who had been presented by the assailant as his “sponsor”.
Shortly before noon on September 25, 2020, Zaheer Mahmoud went to rue Nicolas-Appert armed with a chopper, injuring two people who were in front of the door of the building. The attacker was unaware that Charlie Hebdo had left its premises after the 2015 attack.
During interrogation by the investigating judge in December 2020, he confided having been “shocked” by the new publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by the weekly on the occasion of the opening in early September 2020 of the trial of attacks of January 2015. This publication led to protests in Muslim countries, including Pakistan, his country of origin.
