A French magazine editor has defended the decision to publish caricatures that satirised the Prophet Mohammed.
Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val said he published the caricatures in February 2006 after the editor-in-chief of the Paris tabloid France Soir was fired after reprinting them.
Mr Val said the cartoons targeted Islamist militants: 'In no way do they express any contempt for believers of any faith.'
He rejected suggestions from lawyers for the Muslim groups that Prophet Mohammed should be beyond criticism, saying religion had no place in the political sphere and debate and criticism were essential elements of a democracy.
The cartoons were originally published in 2005 in the Danish daily Jyllens-Posten and later reprinted by several European publications as a defence of free speech.
Courts in France, which observes a strict separation of church and state in the public sphere, have repeatedly defended free speech rights against religious objections.
The publishers surprised the court hearing with a letter of support from presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy.
'I prefer an excess of caricatures to an absence of caricatures,' Mr Sarkozy, the conservative interior minister who helped launch the French Muslim Council, wrote in a letter read out by a lawyer for Charlie Hebdo.
The letter from the presidential race frontrunner, whose ministry is also responsible for religious affairs, drew an angry response from one of three Muslim groups suing the weekly.
'He should remain neutral,' Abdullah Zekri of the Paris Grand Mosque told journalists outside the Paris court hearing the case.
The Grand Mosque, World Islamic League and Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) sued the magazine for printing two of the Danish caricatures, which sparked violence in the Muslim world causing 50 deaths.
