THIS WEEK’S EDITION of Charlie Hebdo, put together by survivors of last week’s newsroom massacre, will feature caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Speaking on French radio, the magazine’s lawyer confirmed that the special issue will “obviously” lampoon Mohammed — among other figures — to show staff will “cede nothing” to extremists seeking to silence them.
The special issue will come out on Wednesday with Richard Malka adding that the cover will be released this evening.
“We will not give in. The spirit of ‘I am Charlie’ means the right to blaspheme,” Reuters quotes Malka of saying.
The magazine will also be offered “in 16 languages” for readers around the world, one of its columnists, Patrick Pelloux, said.
Charlie Hebdo’s weekly publication is usually thought to be about 45,000, but one million copies of this week’s magazine will be published this week.
Five of the magazine’s top cartoonists and three other staff members, including its editor Stéphane Charbonnier, were killed in an attack on its offices that left a total of 12 people dead.
Since last Friday the surviving Charlie Hebdo staff have since been working out of the offices of another French newspaper, Liberation, with equipment loaned by other media organisations.
Their own offices remain sealed by police, with the entrance covered with flowers, pencils and candles in tribute to the dead.
Charlie Hebdo’s offices were firebombed in 2011 when it published cartoons lampooning Mohammed.
Its staff has been receiving death threats from radical Muslims since 2006, when it reprinted Mohammed cartoons by a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten in the name of freedom of expression.
As the two gunmen, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, left the scene of the attack last Wednesday they claimed to have “avenged the Prophet Mohammed”.
© – AFP 2015 with reporting from Rónán Duffy
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