The Islamist gunmen who struck the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish store, killing 17, are dead but on Wednesday, five years after the attack that marked the onset of a wave of Islamist violence in France, their alleged accomplices face trial.

Fourteen defendants, three of whom will be tried in absentia and may be dead, face charges including financing terrorism, membership in a terrorist organisation and supplying weapons to the perpetrators, Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly.