six men will be tried at the juvenile court for the 2020 chopper attack

In this attack, a man of Pakistani origin is accused of seriously injuring two people.

He is accused of attacking two people in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo in September 2020. Investigating judges ordered a trial on Monday March 25 before the special juvenile court for Zaheer Mahmood, and five other men from his entourage. In this attack, two employees of the Premières Lignes press agency were seriously injured.

Zaheer Mahmood will be tried, in accordance with the requisitions of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, for attempted terrorist assassinations and criminal terrorist association, while five other men, who had been in contact with him, will only be tried for criminal terrorist association. . All the suspects were born in Pakistan and arrived in France between 2018 and 2019. Three of them being minors at the time of the facts, the trial will be held before the specially composed juvenile court. However, a dismissal of the case was pronounced for a seventh man, aged 52, who had been presented by the main suspect as his “sponsor”.

A “carefully prepared” project

Zaheer Mahmood arrived in France in 2018. According to the prosecution, shortly before noon on September 25, 2020, this young Pakistani went to rue Nicolas-Appert, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, armed with a chopper. During questioning 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 for the January 2015 attacks.

In their indictment order, of which the AFP was informed, the investigating magistrates consider that his “the gesture was carefully prepared by several scoutings at the scene of the events and by the purchase of weapons in particular”. Zaheer Mahmood was unaware that Charlie Hebdo had left its premises after the 2015 attack.