French magazine Charlie Hebdo republishes Mohammed cartoons
● Paper reprints images on eve of trial of suspects linked to 2015 terror attacks
The French satirical paper whose staff was decimated in a violent attack by Islamic extremists in 2015 is reprinting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed cited by the killers, declaring “history cannot be rewritten nor erased”.
The announcement yesterday came on the eve of the first trial for the January 2015 attacks against Charlie Hebdo and, two days later, a kosher supermarket.
The killings touched off a wave of violence claimed by the Islamic State group across Europe. Seven teen people died – 12 of them at the editorial offices – along with all three attackers.
Thirteen men and a woman accused of providing the attackers with weapons and logistics go on trial today.
In an editorial this week accompanying the caricatures, the paper best known for vulgar irreverence said that although it had declined to publish caricatures of Mohammed since the attacks, doing so for the opening of the trial was necessary. “The only reasons not to stem from political or journalistic cowardice,” the editorial said.
As the attackers, bro thers Cherif and Said Kouachi, walked away from the carnage, they cried out “we have avenged the Prophet”. Claiming the attacks in the name of al- Qaida, they then killed a wounded policeman pointblank and drove away.
Two days later, a jailhouse acquaintance of theirs stormed a kosher supermarket on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, killing four hostages and claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group. The Kouachi brothers had by then holed up in a printing office with another host age. All three attackers died in nearsimultaneous police raids.
The supermarket attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, also killed a young policewoman.
The caricatures re-publi shed this week were first printed in 2006 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, setting off sometimesviolent protests by Muslims who believe depicting Mohammed is blasphemy. Charlie Hebdo, which was then little-known outside France and regularly caricatures religious leaders from various faiths, repub - lished them soon afterwards.
The paper’ s Paris offices were firebombed in 2011 and its editorial leadership placed under police protection, which remains in place to this day.
Laurent Sour is se au, the paper’ s director and one of the few staff to have survived the attack, named each of the victims in a foreword to this week’s edition. “R are are those who, five years later, dare oppose the demands that are still so pressing from religions in general, and some in particular,” wrote Mr Sourisseau, who is also known as Riss. Three of the accused, including the wife of one of the attackers, will not be at the trial because they are abroad and it is not known if they are alive or dead.
Most of the 11 who will appear in court say they knew it was for a crime, but claim they had no idea it was for mass killings. Among those inside the market was Lassana Bathily, an employee whose home village in Mali was just 12 miles from that of Coulibaly’s. Mr Bathily hid a group of the store’s Jewish customers in a cold room and slipped out to warn police about the terror attack inside. Eleven days later, the unlikely hero was granted French citizenship. He is among nearly 200 plaintiffs at the trial.
“We want to know what really happened even if the terrorists won’t be there,” he said. “I hope that those who worked with them, helped them financially will be punished for what they did. That’s the only thing we expect.”
The world rallied behind France in the days after the killings. Leaders from around the world joined millions of people who poured into Paris’ enormous Republique plaza and other gathering spots in France bearing defiant signs that read “Je Suis Charlie”, I am Charlie in English.