Key accused jailed 30 years over Charlie Hebdo attacks

A French court on Wednesday jailed for 30 years the main accused present for the trial over the 2015 killings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and a Jewish supermarket, stopping short of the life term demanded by the prosecution.

Ali Riza Polat was convicted of complicity in terror crimes by the court, which also gave a 30-year jail sentence in absentia to Hayat Boumeddiene, the partner of one of the attackers. She fled to Syria in the wake of the killings.

All the attackers were killed in the wake of the killings. A total of 14 suspected accomplices went on trial, three of them in absentia.

A life jail sentence was given to another prime suspect, Mohamed Belhoucine, although he was tried in absentia and is presumed to be dead in Syria.

Other sentences ranged from four years, with all those present in court convicted for their role in providing support for the killings that shocked France.

Seventeen people were killed over three days of attacks in January 2015, beginning with the massacre of 12 people at the magazine, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

That attack was followed by the murder of a French policewoman and the hostage-taking at the Hyper Cacher market in which four Jewish men were killed.

Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Polat, a 35-year-old French-Turkish friend of one of the attackers. He denied any knowledge of a terrorist plot.