Charlie Hebdo massacre
The Charlie Hebdo massacre was a series of islamic terrorist attacks and mass shootings that shook France in January 2015, claiming the lives of 17 people, including 11 journalists and security personnel at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly French satiric magazine.
History
On 7 January 2015, eight employees of Charlie Hebdo, a building maintenance worker, a guest of the editorial board and two police officers were murdered by a band of masked gunmen who shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great," as they opened fire on the publication's Paris newsroom. Among the dead were four cartoonists who provided the weekly with numerous cartoons depicting images of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Islam prohibits images of the prophet. As the gunmen departed, one was heard to shout, "We avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo." [1]
- Gunmen wearing masks and bulletproof vests attacked Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly newspaper in Paris, around 11:30 am local time on Wednesday, January 7, during the newspaper's weekly editorial meeting. Twelve people were killed: eight journalists, including four well-known cartoonists; two police officers; a building maintenance worker; and a guest of the editorial board. Eleven more were injured, four of them seriously. Police have identified two major suspects in the attack: brothers Saïd Kouachi, 34, and Chérif Kouachi, 32, both of Paris. A third man sought by police, Hamyd Mourad, turned himself in at a police station near the Belgian border. Chérif Kouachi had a previous conviction for terrorism, in 2008, for helping smuggle fighters to Iraq. Saïd Kouachi had trained with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate. The motive for the attack is still unclear. It was the deadliest, but not the first, attack on Charlie Hebdo. The left-wing, anti-establishment newspaper is part of a tradition of serious satire in France. It mocked everything — powerful politicians, pop culture, religion — but reserved particular glee for lampooning Islam and Muslims, often with raunchy cartoons. The newspaper's offices were firebombed in 2011 after they published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.[2]
All together, the January 2015 attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo magazine, a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket left 17 people dead. Eleven Muslim defendants appeared in court in 2020, and three were tried in absentia. One of those not in court was Hayat Boumeddiene, the fugitive partner of Amedy Coulibaly who was killed in the attack on the supermarket. Boumeddiene, who fled to Syria a week before the attacks, was found guilty of financing terrorism and belonging to a criminal terrorist network. She was given a 30-year jail sentence. The main defendant in court, Ali Riza Polat, was found guilty of complicity in terrorist crime and also given a 30-year jail term. All 14 accomplices were found guilty on various charges, ranging from belonging to a criminal network to direct complicity in the January 2015 attacks. The three men who carried out the 7–9 January 2015 attacks were killed and the accomplices, who first went on trial in early September, were accused of obtaining weapons or providing logistical support.
On 7 January 2016, the first anniversary of the shooting, an attempted attack occurred at a police station in the Goutte d'Or district of Paris. The assailant, a Tunisian man posing as an asylum-seeker from Iraq or Syria, wearing a fake explosive belt charged police officers with a meat cleaver while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" and was subsequently shot and killed.
