Having become in blood a global symbol of freedom of expression, the weekly Charlie Hebdo commemorates on Tuesday the ten years of the Islamist attack which decimated it and which opened a series of attacks in France in the days then following months.
Ten years to the day after the killing of January 7, 2015, Charlie released a special 32-page issue on Tuesday. He will publish caricatures on God selected as part of an international competition launched at the end of 2024.
“They did not kill Charlie Hebdo” et “we want it to last 1,000 years”one of its figures, editor-in-chief Gérard Biard, told AFP.
Twelve people, including eight members of the editorial staff, lost their lives in the attack on the weekly by the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, Frenchmen of Algerian origin who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
After two days of tracking, the latter were shot dead by an intervention team from the GIGN, the elite group of the French gendarmerie, in a printing works in Dammartin-en-Goële (Seine-et-Marne), 45 km away. from Paris, where they had taken refuge.
A joyfully anarchist and anticlerical newspaper created in 1970 from the ashes of Hara-Kiri magazine, Charlie had been the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.
Among the dead were its emblematic director, the cartoonist Charb, as well as two legends of caricature in France, Cabu and Wolinski.
Other Islamist attacks near Paris then cost the life of a policewoman the next day in Montrouge, south of Paris, then of four people of Jewish faith in a kosher store at Porte de Vincennes on January 9.
“I am Charlie”
These attacks caused worldwide emotion and gave birth to a support slogan that remains famous: “Je suis Charlie”.
On January 11, 2015, demonstrations brought together nearly 4 million people across France, with many heads of state and government in the Parisian procession.
Ten years after this global fervor, the commemorations organized on Tuesday will be “like every year” marked “through sobriety, in accordance with the wishes of the families”, indicated the Paris town hall.
The mayor, Anne Hidalgo, “will pay tribute to the victims of the January 2015 attacks in the presence of the President of the Republic” et “of several ministers”.
Broadcast live on France 2, these commemorations will begin at 11:30 a.m. rue Nicolas-Appert in the 11th arrondissement, where Charlie Hebdo had its premises in 2015.
They will continue on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, where police officer Ahmed Merabet was shot dead by the Kouachi as they fled. They will end at 1:10 p.m. with a tribute to the victims of the Hypercasher store.
On Wednesday, the city of Montrouge will organize a tribute ceremony to municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, killed by Amedy Coulibaly, also author of the Hypercasher attack.
On November 13, 2015, France was mourned by other attacks, on an even larger scale: they left 130 dead, in the Parisian concert hall Bataclan and on several terraces of bars and restaurants.
“Institution”
“The upcoming commemoration of the 2015 attacks reminds us that the dangers are still there and that we must not give up in the fight for the protection of the French and the defense of our freedoms”declared Emmanuel Macron on Friday during the council of ministers, according to comments reported by a participant.
Charlie Hebdo, “which was built in marginality, now appears as an institution”, for his part, recently observed Riss, Charb’s successor.
Far from the records of 2015 (the issue following the attack had eight million copies distributed and subscriptions peaked at 240,000 in February), the weekly now has 30,000 subscribers and 20,000 copies are sold on newsstands. Its ultra-protected premises are kept secret.
Coincidentally, the anniversary falls the day after the opening of the trial of six men tried at the juvenile court for a chopper attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2020.
On October 3, jihadist Peter Cherif was sentenced to life imprisonment, in particular for having participated in the training of his childhood friend Chérif Kouachi in Yemen.
Two weeks later, we learned of the death at the age of 40 of the former Charlie Hebdo webmaster, Simon Fieschi, who had been seriously injured in the attack.
