‘Spared because I am a woman’

A JOURNALIST has revealed how the terrorists who massacred her Charlie Hebdo colleagues spared her life – because she was a woman.

Reporter Sigolene Vinson survived the brutal attack on the French satirical magazine, in which 12 people including six of her coworkers and two police officers were shot dead.

She told Radio France Internationale that one of the killers held a gun to her head, but decided against killing her too.

Vinson said one of the shooters told her: “I’m not killing you because you are a woman and we don’t kill women, but you have to convert to Islam, read the Qu’ran and wear a veil.”

She added that the men shouted “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar” as they fled the scene.

Yesterday it emerged that Charlie Hebdo magazine staff thought a terrorist attack on their offices was a “joke” involving fire crackers, before being gunned down in cold blood.

Survivor Laurent Leger, a Charlie Hebdo journalist who was in the room where most of the victims were slaughtered, told how some were laughing when they first heard shots.

Leger said he saw “barbarism enter the newspaper” as the terrorists called out the name “Charb”,

REPORTER: Sigolene Vinson referring to editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of those killed.

“They called out the name of Charb, yes. But after that they fired into the group,” said Leger, adding that he threw himself under a table to get away from the gunman.

The shooter then turned to his accomplice, according to Leger, saying “he thought he had killed everybody, but did not kill women”.

Both French and American officials were aware that French Algerian suspect Said Kouachi was inspired by Anwar alAwlaki, the US-born cleric who ran Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Before he was killed in a US drone strike in September 2011, al-Awlaki often called for the killing of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who insulted the Prophet Muhammad. – Daily Mail