Sentenced to life for January 2015 attacks, prisoner placed in solitary confinement attacks guards at Laon prison

Ali Riza Polat, a solitary confinement prisoner sentenced to life for “complicity” in the attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher in January 2015, attacked guards at the Laon penitentiary center in Aisne on Tuesday, July 16, franceinfo learned from concordant sources.

According to one of these sources, one of the guards was slightly injured in the forearm by a broken bottle. He has since returned to work.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) has taken charge of the investigation entrusted to the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate of the Judicial Police (Sdat), the DGSI and the Zonal Directorate of the National Police (DZPN). The investigation is open for “attempted murder of persons in positions of public authority in connection with a terrorist enterprise and in a state of legal recidivism”, indicates the Pnat contacted by franceinfo.

According to a source close to the case, the prisoner attacked the two prison guards when they had just entered his cell to take him to the shower. Ali Riza Polat rushed at them with a broken bottle, shouting “God is great“. The two prison guards escaped the attack and eventually managed to subdue him. After negotiation, the prisoner returned the broken bottle and was placed in a disciplinary unit.

On October 20, 2022, after six weeks of hearings, Ali Riza Polat was sentenced on appeal to life imprisonment, with a security period of twenty years. The special assize court of Paris found him guilty of complicity in the seventeen murders carried out by the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly between January 7 and 9, 2015 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, in Montrouge and at the Hyper Cacher.