The group - which prosecutors described as "merchants of death" - comprised mostly of Iraqi Kurds and were prosecuted after a Europe-wide operation in 2022.
The trial of eight people accused of various roles in the October 2020 stabbing murder and beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty began this week in Paris. The killer, an 18-year-old Chechen, was shot dead by police at the scene of the attack, in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Paty was murdered after showing cartoons of the prophet Muhammed, published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, to a class he held on the subject of free speech. Mathilde Goanec reports here on the handling by the education authorities and Paty’s school colleagues of the 10-day period before he was attacked when the teacher was the target of mounting threats from Islamist militants and their sympathisers.
Four people were wounded, including one whose hand was cut off, in a fight reportedly between rival teenage gangs on an RER Paris commuter train at the Ozoir-la-Ferrière station in the south-east suburbs of the capital.
Algerian-French author and journalist Kamel Daoud, 54, has won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his novel Houris set in the 1990s war in Algeria between Islamists and the government.
Seven men and a woman stand trial in Paris on Monday accused variously of aiding and abetting a murder and terrorist conspiracy over the beheading in 2020 of Samuel Paty, a school teacher in a Paris suburb who was attacked by an Islamist of Chechen origin following a post of outrage on social media by a Muslim father, one of the accused, whose daughter lied that Paty had discriminated against Muslim classmates.
The death was announced Saturday of a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting on Thursday in Poitiers, north-west France, which left four others wounded and which was described by the authorities as related to drugs dealing, while French interior minister said the number of similar shootings across the country has left it at a 'tipping point'.
It is estimated that around 274,000 people in France suffer from Parkinson’s disease. The vast majority of them follow a treatment of dopaminergic drugs to compensate for their lack of the chemical messenger dopamine, a condition which causes many of the debilitating symptoms of the disease. But the drugs, and in particular dopamine agonists, can have alarming side effects, ranging from making compulsive purchases, daily gambling, the pursuit of sexual obsessions and, in one of the several cases detailed here, a murderous rampage against animals. As Rozenn Le Saint reports, some of the patients are unaware of the risks of the drugs, which can leave them and their families, the collateral victims, with huge debts and psycological trauma.
Five people were wounded, including three minors, in a drive-by shooting against a bar in Poitiers, north-west France, and which was followed by a mass brawl involving up to 600 people, according to local authorities who said the incidents were related to drug trafficking.
Abou Sangaré, who plays the lead role of illegal immigrant in the recent French film L’Histoire de Souleymane, for which he won a best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, has seen his applications for a residency permit in France rejected on three occasions, leading to a deportation order, but since his stardom the government has invited him to apply again.
In Mazan, southern France, where Gisèle Pelicot and her ex-husband lived together until it was discovered he spent years sedating her into a comatose state and inviting more than 80 men to rape her on separate occasions, Dominique Pelicot's trial in nearby Avignon has sent shockwaves through the normally tranquil village.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday wounded up his official visit to Morocco, in which he sealed a re-warming of relations with the kingdom after several years of tensions. One of the major factors in that process was his recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Macron led a delegation of French companies on his visit, which have signed multi-billion dollar deals to invest in the territory. However, as Ilyes Ramdani reports from Rabat, there are doubts over the legality of the economic incursion into a land annexed by Morocco, but also claimed by an independence movement of the local Sahrawi people, while considered by the UN to be the last “non-self-governing” terrirory on the African continent.
On the second day of his three-day official visit to Morocco, French President Emmanuel Macron ended ambiguity over his approach to the issue of independence for the territory of Western Sahara, telling the Moroccan parliament that French companies 'will support the development' of the former Spanish colony whose 'present and future' belong under 'Moroccan sovereignty'.
An 'electronic travel authorisation' to be introduced in Britain in April and which requires all EU visitors to register before arrival using a passport threatens to end a special arrangement agreed between the UK and France last December whereby French school parties can arrive using identity cards, and non-EU pupils among them are not required to have visas.
The trial of in Paris of Gérard Depardieu on charges of sexually assaulting two women on the set of a film in 2021 opened briefly on Monday but was soon postponed until next March after the absent actor's lawyers produced medical certificates attesting to his poor health.
A man reported to be of Indian origin died in the early hours of Sunday morning from cardiac arrest after a dinghy he was in with around 50 other migrants deflated shortly after beginning an attempt to cross the Channel from France to England.
