The suspects, all men aged in their 20s, are said to belong to the youth wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which the European Union and much of the international community consider a terrorist organisation.

One of the defendants failed to turn up to answer charges of lobbing petrol bombs at the two cafes and the cultural centre in March and April 2007.

They have been charged with damaging property and possession of explosives while some face the more serious charge of membership in a criminal organisation with terrorist aims and terrorist financing.

Most of the Kurds on trial were arrested during raids in June 2007 in the Paris suburbs and in the Bordeaux and Marseille regions.

Defense lawyers accuse prosecutors of exaggerating allegations against their clients, although they recognize that the eleven were politically sensitive to the plight of their ethnic brethren.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.