Trial in Paris

Lawyers in the courtroom for the 2015 Paris attacks.CHARLES PLATIAU / Reuters

More than five years after the jihadist attack against the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, justice has put 11 defendants on the bench - another three are tried in absentia - in a process of historical significance both for their size. of the investigation, the characteristics of the fact judged and its implications.

It is necessary to highlight the meticulousness and the will to preserve - the trial will be filmed and kept in the National Archives of France, being the first on terrorist matters - as an example of the behavior of a democracy in the face of a direct attack on two of its essences: freedom of expression and coexistence.

Until November 10, the date for which the sentence is scheduled, dozens of witnesses will testify about the murder, for three days, of 17 people at the hands of a jihadist commando.

Although unfortunately the wave of jihadist terrorism had already been going on for years, those attacks started the path of others of the same nature that have already left more than 250 dead in France and hundreds more throughout the European continent.

It should be emphasized, therefore, that although past events are judged, the jihadist threat is still very present both in the commission of attacks and in the recruitment of sympathizers.

But the oral process started yesterday in the French capital goes beyond what is a criminal procedure, since it puts on the table a key issue in any democratic system such as freedom of expression and its limits.

And it does so at a time when anti-Semitic and Islamophobic slogans, among others, are increasing, not only in France but throughout the continent.

It is necessary to monitor and reject that said extremist transgressions can serve as an excuse to put restrictions on an essential right in any free society and even less that it compromises in undermining it for fear of possible reprisals from those who despise the system of democratic coexistence and seek to replace it with a tyranny.

The strength of democracy lies precisely in bringing together very different voices in a common project and in fully guaranteeing the right to express any discrepancy without fear.

In this sense, the re-publication by Charlie Hebdo of the vignettes that the jihadists used as an excuse to carry out the 2015 massacre, far from unnecessary provocation, is a legitimate and pertinent claim to a democratic right and a reminder to those who They hate this system of freedoms that, no matter how much pain they may inflict and no matter how much terror they can and intend to create, they will not prevail.