The other 'defendants' in the 'Charlie Hebdo' trial

The director of 'Charlie Hebdo', Laurent Sourisseau, center, enters the Paris court in the trial for the 2015 attacks, this Wednesday.GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP

The 11 defendants - men of anodyne appearance, closer to that of petty criminals than to the traditional image of the Islamic terrorist - followed the session, some indifferently, others curious.

On Wednesday, on the sixth day of the trial for the January 2015 attacks in France, the accusing finger pointed in another direction.

"There was a network of people who refused to see the evidence of the new totalitarianism that is Islamist terrorism, and who preferred to slander us," said Fabrice Nicolino, testimony of the private prosecution and journalist for the satirical weekly

.

"They participated in the psychological preparation of this matter," he added.

Nicolino - like two other testimonies of the day, the director of the magazine, Laurent Sourisseau or Riss, and the

, Simon Fieschi - were in the

newsroom

when Chérif and Said Kouachi broke in armed with

rifles

and killed 10 journalists, cartoonists and employees.

Nicolino, Riss, and Fieschi survived with injuries.

Riss, standing on the stage with her hands in her pockets, explained the story of

, the irreverent magazine that poked fun at all religions - and not just religions - but never until the end of the first decade. of the century, he had to worry about his physical integrity.

It all started in February 2006, when he published the Muhammad cartoons previously published by the Danish daily

.

For

, it was about exercising freedom of expression.

Others considered that they represented a gratuitous offense to the faithful of a religion.

"Deep down, we hadn't changed," Riss said.

“But around us the environment changed.

We saw new forms of obscurantism and totalitarianism emerge ”.

The publication of the cartoons made

target for radical Islamists.

Also of those who, from progressive positions, accused them of racism and Islamophobia.

An arson attack destroyed the headquarters in 2011.

Journalists and cartoonists received threats.

Some lived under police protection.

When they saw the two armed men break into the newsroom on January 7, 2015, they immediately knew what it was about.

Afterward, the Kouachi brothers proclaimed: “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad.

We have killed

. "

The process began on September 2;

the ruling is expected on November 10.

The 14 defendants - three of them absent - face sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.

They are accused of complicity in the attacks in which for three days in which the Kouachi and their pal Amedy Coulibaly sowed terror in France, leaving 17 victims.

Both the Kouachi and Coulibaly were killed during police operations.

A solemn silence fell in the room as Riss reconstructed the minute and 49 seconds that the assault on the magazine lasted.

"And they shot, they shot, they shot," he recalled.

“You say to yourself: 'It's the end of life.

I do not get out of this.

It's my turn'.

Sometimes you wonder: 'How will I die?'

'Well, I'm going to die in

, my newspaper.'

Fieschi, who was shot in the neck, detailed the physical and psychological consequences.

The

has shrunk seven centimeters, he is on a crutch and as he walks this 36-year-old man seems much older.

“I feel a tiredness that never goes away.

All my movements are acts torn from exhaustion, "he explained.

That the trial is about more than just terrorist acts has become clear after a week.

Here issues such as the current state of freedom of expression and the intellectual battles that concern the secular model of the country are also settled.

"The shocking thing," Riss said in court, "is that a part of the left not only did not defend 'Charlie Hebdo', but found a political excuse for this type of action."

Nicolino linked the attacks on

to the long French tradition of intellectuals complacent with totalitarianism among whom he cited Jean-Paul Sartre.

And - after citing publications such as

and journalists such as Edwy Plenel, editor of the

newspaper

and an extrotskyist, or Olivier Cyran, who had worked at

before the cartoons were published - he denounced the existence of a "mental Stalinism" which was supposedly a breeding ground for the attacks.

"I understand anger and even hatred, but the assimilation of any criticism of

with complicity with terrorists is abject and tragic," Cyran replied on the social network Twitter.

Philippe Lançon, another survivor of the attack, refused to testify. In an article, he claimed that everything he had to say was in his book

(Anagrama, in Spanish). And he regretted that the consensus in favor of

after the attack, summed up in the famous slogan

, had disappeared. "This isolation has political reasons, but the essential, in my opinion, is a matter of tone," he argued. "

still wants to laugh or smile at everything, in a world in which people, especially on the left, no longer want to laugh at anything, and less at themselves."