Charlie Hebdo HR manager moved from home in the wake of threats

Paris, Sept. 22: Police have moved the head of human resources at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo from her home following death threats received last week, she told a French magazine.

Marika Bret, who has been living under police protection for nearly five years in the aftermath of the deadly assault on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, said the threats were “sufficiently concrete to be taken seriously”.

Bret said she would not be returning.

“I had 10 minutes to gather my things and leave my home. Ten minutes to leave behind a part of my life, that’s a bit short, that’s very brutal,” she told weekly news magazine Le Point published Monday.

The threats coincide with the trial of 14 suspected accomplices of the perpetrators of the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket that left a total of 17 dead.

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 offices of Charlie Hebdo, whose no- taboo style, including publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, had divided the country.

There is “a crazy amount of hatred surrounding Charlie Hebdo”, Bret told Le Point, saying the forced departure from her home “translates the unprecedented level of tension that we are having to deal with”.

Since the start of the trial, which prompted Charlie Hebdo to republish controversial cartoons, “we have received all kinds of horrible messages, notably threats from Al- Qaeda, and calls to finish the job started by the Kouachi brothers,” Bret said.

Al- Qaeda earlier this month threatened Charlie Hebdo with a repeat of the massacre of its staff.