French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose offices in Paris were targeted by ISIS-affiliated gunmen in 2015, announced on Tuesday that it will reprint the caricatures of Prophet Mohammed that had apparently sparked the attack. The cartoons are set to be released today, to mark the start of the trial of alleged accomplices to the massacre.
On January 7, 2015, brothers Chérif and Said Kouachi, armed with assault rifles, submachine guns, grenades, and pistols, stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, killing 12 people, including some of France’s most revered cartoonists and other editorial staff, and injuring a dozen more. The attackers reportedly shouted that they had “avenged the Prophet” as they left the scene.
Two days later, a third gunman opened fire at a kosher supermarket in Paris, killing several people and taking numerous hostages. Though the assailants were all subsequently killed in police raids, their 14 accomplices, who allegedly provided them with ammunition and logistical support, go on trial on terrorism charges today. It will be the first-ever terror trial in France to be filmed.
Publishing director Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau, who was wounded in the attack, wrote in an editorial: “We will never lie down, we will never give up,” stressing that the drawings belonged to history and that history could neither be rewritten nor erased. “The only reasons,” he said, to not reprint the cartoons, “stem from political or journalistic cowardice.”
The latest edition of the paper has the front page featuring 12 cartoons of the Prophet, which first appeared in a Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005. In the center of the cover is an original drawing of the Prophet by cartoonist Jean Cabut, who lost his life in the 2015 massacre.
Sourisseau’s editorial also states that the publication had been requested to print caricatures of the Prophet on several occasions following the 2015 attacks. However, the publication had refrained from doing so because it needed a good reason and the right moment “to bring something to the debate”.
“To reproduce these cartoons in the week the trial over the January 2015 terrorist attacks opens seemed essential to us,” it says.
In response to the publication’s decision to reprint the caricatures, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was not in a position to pass judgment on the daily’s decision, thereby defending his people’s right to freedom of speech and expression. However, speaking on a visit to Lebanon, Macron said that it was important for French citizens to practice civility, respect one another and avoid “a dialogue of hate”. The French Council of the Muslim Faith also sought to calm any possible tensions on Tuesday, and tweeted: “The freedom to caricature and the freedom to dislike them are enshrined and nothing justifies violence.”
Charlie Hebdo Republishes Inflammatory Cartoon of Prophet Mohammed As Terror Trial Begins
The paper’s offices were attacked by Islamist gunmen in 2015.
September 2, 2020
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST