PARIS: French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo said Tuesday it was republishing hugely blasphemous cartoons to mark this week's start of the trial of alleged accomplices to the attack.

"We will never lie down. We will never give up," director Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau wrote in an editorial to go with the blasphemous cartoons in the latest edition.

Twelve people, including some of France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the paper's offices in Paris.

The perpetrators were killed in the wake of the massacre but 14 alleged accomplices in the attacks, which also targeted a Jewish supermarket, will go on trial in Paris on Wednesday.

The court in Paris will sit until November 10 and, in a first for a terror trial, proceedings will be filmed for archival purposes given public interest.

National anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard dismissed the idea that it was just "little helpers" going on trial since the three gunmen were now dead.

"It is about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of the events, who provided means of financing, operational material, weapons, a residence," he told France Info radio on Monday.

"All this is essential to the terrorist action."