A 29-year-old Algerian man is going on trial in Paris Monday accused of killing a policewoman and trying to blow up a church near Paris, a failed 2015 attack that investigators say was orchestrated by Islamic State extremists in Syria.
Instead of bombing a Sunday Mass in the Paris suburb of Villejuif, Sidi Ahmed Ghlam shot himself in the leg, and was soon arrested.
The incident came amid a series of Islamist extremist attacks in 2015-2016 that rocked France. Another Paris court is currently holding a two-month trial into January 2015 attacks that killed 17 people at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.