FRANCE TODAY MARKED 10 years since an Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper that shocked the country and led to fierce debate about freedom of expression and religion.
President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo led commemorations by laying wreaths at the site of the weekly’s former offices, which were stormed by two masked Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen with AK-47 assault rifles.
Macron and Hidalgo also paid tribute to Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim police officer who was executed at point-blank range near the building in the Bastille area of the capital in one of the most shocking images recorded of the tragedy.
Twelve people died in the attacks, including eight editorial staff, while a separate but linked hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris by a third gunman on 9 January, 2015, claimed another four lives.
“We have not forgotten them,” Macron wrote on social media alongside pictures of the murdered newspaper staff including famed cartoonists Cabu, Charb, Honore, Tignous and Wolinski who were holding an editorial meeting at the time of the assault.
Nous ne les oublions pas. pic.twitter.com/w3h7kvc3Bb
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 7, 2025
The bloodshed signalled the start of a dark period for France during which extremists inspired by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group repeatedly mounted attacks that set the country on edge and raised religious tensions.
“Today is not necessarily sad,” Frederica Wolinksi, the daughter of Wolinski, told reporters at the scene of his death, which she was visiting for the first time.
“It’s good that 10 years later we can still remember those who died on 7 January so well.”
A retrospective of Wolinski’s work went on display at a Paris gallery at the end of last year in one of a host of media events, from new books to documentaries, to mark the anniversary.
[En direct] - Hommage aux victimes des attentats de janvier 2015: la sonnerie aux morts retentit devant les anciens locaux de Charlie Hebdo
— Le Figaro (@Le_Figaro) January 7, 2025
→https://t.co/FMA85qx7Dd pic.twitter.com/Jd6fV9inoc
Charlie Hebdo published a special edition this week featuring a defiant front-page cartoon with the caption “Indestructible!”
In a typically provocative move, the militantly atheist publication also organised a God-themed cartoon contest that invited submissions of the “funniest and meanest” caricatures of religious figures.
The attack on the newspaper by two Paris-born brothers of Algerian descent was said to be revenge for its decision to publish caricatures lampooning the Prophet Mohammed, Islam’s most revered figure.
Germany “shares the pain of our French friends”, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on social media, adding that the “barbaric attack… targeted our common values of liberty and democracy – which we will never accept”.
The 10-year anniversary of the killings has led to fresh introspection in France about the nature of press freedom and the ability of publications such as Charlie Hebdo to blaspheme and ridicule religious figures, particularly Islamic ones.
The killings fuelled an outpouring of sympathy in France expressed in a wave of “Je Suis Charlie” (“I Am Charlie”) solidarity, with many protesters brandishing pencils and pens and vowing not to be intimidated by religious fanatics.
“Are we all still Charlie?” public broadcaster France 2 will ask in a special debate programme this evening.
Noe Thibault, a 20-year-old student, was waiting at a police barrier close to the former Charlie Hebdo offices today as Macron, other VIPs and the families of those killed took part in the commemoration ceremony.
He offered “unwavering and unconditional support” for the newspaper, which now operates from a secret location, even though he said he was only an occasional reader and “often in disagreement with their opinions and editorial line”.
“I find it incredible that some French people don’t think freedom of expression is the most fundamental of our freedoms,” he said, holding a bunch of white flowers which he had brought as a tribute.
Elsewhere today, a 29-year-old Pakistani man went on trial in Paris after he attacked two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices in 2020, wrongly believing the newspaper was still based in the building.
The court heard how Zaheer Mahmood had been influenced by radical Pakistani preacher Khadim Hussain Rizvi who had called for blasphemers to be decapitated.
Both foreign and domestic critics of Charlie Hebdo are often puzzled by its crude humour and deliberately provocative cartoons that regularly incite controversy.
It has been accused of crossing the line into Islamophobia – which it denies – while its decision to repeatedly publish cartoons of Mohammed was seen by some as driving a wedge between the white French population and the country’s large Muslim minority.
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