Hebdo survivor ‘haunted by guilt’

PARIS: The French cartoonist at the Charlie Hebdo weekly magazine who was forced by jihadist murderers to let them into its offices says she is still traumatised by feelings of guilt, as she recalled the horror of the January 2015 massacre.

Corinne Rey, 38, known as Coco (pictured below in a court drawing), had gone outside for a cigarette when terrorist brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi approached her and forced her at gunpoint to tap in the entry code for the office.

“I had a sense of dread,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “I was in distress, I could not think any more,” she told the trial of 14 suspected accomplices in the January 7-9 2015 attacks on the magazine and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 innocent victims dead.

“I knew it was a Kalashnikov,” she said, recalling the long climb up the stairs before entering the offices of Charlie Hebdo with the two terrorists, who were “armed to the teeth”.

Entering the offices, the attackers shot at Simon Fieschi, the administrator of the weekly’s website. Rey said she ran to hide under a desk.

“After the shots, there was silence, a silence of death … I thought they were going to finish off the job with all the ones they hadn’t killed.”

But after killing 10 people inside the office, the attackers left, leaving behind a vision of “horror”.

Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, 76, Georges Wolinski, 80, and Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, 47, were among France’s most celebrated cartoonists. All of them died.

The trial, which began on September 2, is expected to continue until November.