14 on trial in 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks

The trial has begun in Paris of 14 people charged in connection with a series of deadly attacks across France more than five years ago which left 17 people dead.

At the center of the incident was an attack in January 2015 by extremist militants on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and which resulted in 12 people being killed.

In the following days, a policewoman was shot dead and there was also an attack on a Jewish supermarket. The wave of violence provoked outrage across the country, and saw mass demonstrations under the slogan "Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie)", defending the right to free speech.

The attackers were killed, and the defendants on trial face charges of aiding them in ways such as obtaining weapons and providing logistical support. Three of them are being tried in absentia, as they are believed to have fled to northern Iraq or Syria.

Charlie Hebdo has a long history of provocative content, mocking all parts of the political spectrum and establishment institutions.

Before the fatal attack of 2015, staff had already received death threats and the magazine was the target of a petrol bomb attack in 2011 because of its coverage of Islam.

The cartoons that led to the 2015 attack had previously been published in a magazine in Denmark, and this week, ahead of the trial, Charlie Hebdo reprinted them.

"We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited, ... but because there was a need for a good reason to do it," said an editorial in the magazine.

"To reproduce these cartoons in the week the trial begins over the January 2015 terrorist attacks seemed essential to us," it continued, adding that the drawings "belong to history, and history cannot be rewritten nor erased".

"We will never lie down. We will never give up," said the magazine's director, Laurent Sourisseau.

French President Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Lebanon, said it was not for him to pass comment on the editorial policy of the magazine, but added that the freedom to blaspheme was part of the country's freedom of belief. "Satire is not a discourse of hate," he added.

The trial, which is expected to last until November, and will feature around 200 plaintiffs, including survivors of the attacks, has already been delayed since March because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, making it difficult for people to gather safely for the court proceedings.