Four suspected accomplices detained for Charlie Hebdo meat cleaver attack

Suspects accused of inciting alleged attacker to carry out plot

A policeman stands at a blocked road next to the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in 2015. EPA

Four people have been arrested in France suspected of having criminal links to a Pakistani man who staged an attack armed with a meat cleaver outside the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in October.
The assault, for which Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud is accused, took place as a court case involving 14 accomplices to the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo's office and a Jewish supermarket in Paris got under way.
The four detained earlier this week, all of Pakistani origin, are suspected of taking part in a terrorist conspiracy, of being aware of the attacker's plot and inciting him to carry it out, a judicial source told AFP news agency.

The 14 Hebdo accomplices were convicted on charges ranging from membership of a criminal network to complicity in the attacks on Wednesday.

Among them was Hayat Boumeddiene, former partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a female police officer and then four people in a Jewish supermarket.
Coulibaly was an associate of the gunmen behind the deadly attack at the Paris offices of the magazine in 2015.

Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan man who attempted a terrorist attack on train travelling between Amsterdam and Paris in August 2015, was jailed for life on Thursday.

He was armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle and 300 rounds of ammunition but heroic passengers managed to overpower him before he caused anyone serious harm.