It was the second jihadist terrorist attack to target a church in France, and the third in a sequence that struck France as, in the autumn of 2020, the country was following the trial of the January 2015 terrorist attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket. The trial of the young undocumented Tunisian who killed three people with a knife on October 29, 2020 at the basilica in the southern city of Nice began on Monday, February 10, at a special criminal court in Paris.

The accused, Brahim Aouissaoui, is standing trial for "murder and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist undertaking," according to the terms used in the court order. His trial brings a bloody trilogy of terrorism cases to a close: One that started with the knife attack committed by a young Pakistani refugee on September 25, 2020, against two residents of Rue Nicolas-Appert in Paris he had mistakenly thought were journalists working for Charlie Hebdo, which had just republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He was tried and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment last month.

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