trial

Belgian prosecutors said Friday they have asked France to hand over Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in and around Paris, so that he can stand trial in Brussels in December over his alleged involvement in a March 2016 shooting attack on police in the Belgian capital. 

A French court on Friday handed Teodorin Obiang, vice-president of Equatorial Guinea and son of the country’s president, a three-year suspended prison sentence and a suspended fine of 30 million euros after he was found guilty in absentia of money laundering wealth embezzled from the African state’s public funds. The presiding magistrates, who in their ruling underlined the initial reticence of French prosecutors to bring Obiang to trial,  also ordered the confiscation of his assets in France, estimated to be worth 150 million euros, including a vast Paris townhouse and a fleet of luxurious cars. Michel Deléan reports.

Abdelkader Merah, accused of helping his jihadi brother Mohamed Merah in his March 2012 shooting murders of seven people in and around the southern French city of Toulouse has begun giving his testimony to a Paris court, telling magistrates 'there is a big difference' between him and his late brother.

The trial continued this week of Abdelkader Merah and Fettah Malki, both accused of complicity in the crimes of Mohamed Merah, the Islamist terrorist brother of Abdelkader Merah who murdered seven people in and around the city of Toulouse, southern France, in March 2012. Both men have denied the charges. The court hearings, which opened on October 2nd, have been marked by ill-tempered verbal exchanges, while a lawyer for Abdelkader Merah has claimed to have received death threats. But the rowdy debates suddenly fell silent this week when witnesses took to the stand to recount Merah’s massacre of a rabbi and three children, aged 3, 5 and 8, at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Matthieu Suc was in court to hear their harrowing testimony.

A Paris court handed down sentences of up to seven years in jail, including part-suspended terms, to seven defendants accused of attacking a police patrol car stuck in traffic in May 2016, when two officers were punched and beaten with metal bars before their vehicle was set on fire on the sidelines of a demonstration by police against violence directed at them during street protests.

A Paris court on Friday sentenced Christine Rivière, 51, nicknamed 'Jihadi Granny', to a maximum ten years in jail for 'association with criminals preparing a terrorist attack' after she encouraged her son's activities within the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria, where she later joined him on several occasions.

The trial of Abdelkader Merah, 35, accused of aiding his younger brother Mohamed Merah during the latter's nine-day spree of killings of seven people, including soldiers and Jewish children, in and around the southern French city of Toulouse in March 2012, opened in Paris on Monday.

Boris Boillon, 47, who served under president Nicolas Sarkozy as French ambassador to Iraq and Tunisia in a career steeped in controversy, has gone on trial for tax fraud and forgery after he was arrested in Paris trying to board a Belgium-bound train with bags containing 350,000 euros and 40,000 dollars in cash.

Eighteen members of the White Wolves Klan face 35 charges including armed violence, theft and attempted murder.

The Swiss banking group could avoid trial over the alleged massive tax evasion it is accused of having helped among its French customers if it agrees to a settlement, but said it could never agree to a write-off of the 1.1 billion-euros it handed over three years ago as a bail bond, which its legal counsel claimed was "not at all the market price".

Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, 67, dubbed Carlos the Jackal, already serving a life sentence for murdering two French intelligence officers, appeared in court in Paris on Monday accused of lobbing a hand grenade into a crowded Left Bank shopping centre in September 1974, killing two people and wounding 34 others.

Paris judge says scion to art fortune had a made ‘clear attempt’ to hide assets but failings by French investigators ruled out a guilty verdict.

The International Monetary Fund managing director is to be tried by a special court on Monday charged with negligence when she was French finance minister for allowing a payout of more than 400 million euros from public funds to tycoon Bernard Tapie, a decision since quashed.