Prison sentences imposed during trial over terrorist attack in southern France Biden meets Navalny’s wife and daughter

Nearly six years after an Islamist attack in southern France that killed four people, a court in Paris sentenced six men and a woman from the perpetrator’s entourage to prison terms of six months to four years. On Friday evening, the judges imposed the highest sentence on the perpetrator’s then 18-year-old girlfriend, because she was aware of his plans and had not warned the police. As the newspaper ‘Le Parisien’ reported from the courtroom, the authorities assume that the young woman is no longer radicalising.

The other suspects were convicted because they helped the perpetrator in various ways without being aware of his actual plans. A friend accompanied him when he bought weapons. The sentences were considerably lower than the maximum prison sentence of eleven years that the Public Prosecution Service had demanded.

In March 2018, a 25-year-old Islamist killed four people in separate attacks in the Carcassonne region, including a 44-year-old police officer who had made himself available in a hostage exchange. The gendarmerie officer Arnaud Beltrame was later celebrated as a hero; he would have prevented further deaths. 16 people were injured in the attacks. Police killed the attacker, who had barricaded himself in a supermarket.

The attack was part of a series of Islamist attacks in France. The country was particularly shocked by the serious attacks in Paris in 2015 and Nice in 2016. The attacker described himself as a ‘soldier’ ​​of the terrorist militia of Islamic State (IS) and also shouted ‘God is big’ in Arabic. (sda/dpa)