A French extremist Islamist, who was close to the perpetrators of the deadly attack on the employees of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The now 42-year-old man has been on trial since mid-September in Paris and was charged with "belonging to a criminal terrorist group" when he fought for one of al-Qaeda's subgroups in Yemen.
During his time in Yemen, the convicted man is suspected of having trained two brothers who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Twelve employees were killed, and massive international support for the satirical magazine was expressed, among other things, in the campaign "Je suis Charlie" – I am Charlie.
The judge said that the life sentence was issued due to the "seriousness of (the convicted person's) actions".
The convicted man was accused by the prosecutor of having been the "architect" of a series of violent acts in France during the 2010s, as well as being involved in the kidnapping of three Frenchmen in Yemen in 2011.
