Court hears case against magazine that published Prophet cartoons

A Paris court heard opening arguments today in a defamation trial against a French satirical weekly that reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that had stoked outrage and violence across the Islamic world last year.

Charlie-Hebdo magazine and the publication’s director, Philippe Val, are charged with “publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion.”

The charge carries a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to €26,800.

The Paris Mosque and the Union of Islamic Organisations of France brought the charges.

The caricatures, one of which showed Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban, were published first in a Danish paper in September 2005, and sparked angry protests across the Islamic world and in Europe.

Many European papers later reprinted them in the name of press freedom.

France’s Charlie-Hebdo ran the drawings last February.

The magazine featured a cover page showing Mohammed with his head in his hands, crying and saying: “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.”

Val called the case a “medieval trial,” saying religions should be subject to “critique and to democratic debate.”

Terrorism, not Muslims, were the intended target of the drawings, he said on the eve of the trial.