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A trial regarding a 2016 homicide of a priest started in Paris on Monday.
The assault that resulted within the demise of 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel in a Catholic church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray close to Rouen shook France.
Police shot and killed the 2 assailants on the scene. The trial entails alleged accomplices.
Catholic Church officers have launched the method to hunt beatification for Hamel, a primary step to canonization or sainthood
Who’s on trial?
French authorities initially charged 4 males, together with the alleged instigator, for the assault. Nevertheless, the alleged instigator is believed to have died in a bomb assault in Iraq. As his demise shouldn’t be formally confirmed, he’s on trial in absentia.
The opposite three face expenses of membership in a terrorist group, which they’ve denied. Their legal professionals have described them as “scapegoats.”
The 2 attackers, each 19 and who have been shot and killed on the scene, had claimed in a video to be members of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group.
IS later referred to as them its “troopers” and stated the assault was in retaliation for France’s combat in opposition to jihadis in Syria and Iraq.
Prosecutors have stated the three knew in regards to the attackers’ plan, and one in all them had accompanied one of many attackers to Turkey — in an try to achieve Syria — simply weeks earlier than the homicide.
What occurred?
Throughout morning Mass on July 26, 2016, two attackers first took six folks hostage within the church in a working class suburb.
Hamel had his throat slit on the foot of the altar, however a nun was capable of escape and lift the alarm.
One of many worshipers taken hostage, Man Coponet, was additionally significantly injured. Coponet, now 92, is predicted to attend no less than a part of the courtroom periods “to grasp how these youths, barely out of adolescence, may commit such horrors,” his lawyer informed the AFP information company.
France has confronted a collection of jihadi assaults that started with the 2015 Charlie Hebdo bloodbath.
fb/dj (AFP, dpa)
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