HEARING REPORT – On September 25, 2020, Zaheer Mahmood seriously injured two young people at the butcher's shop on rue Nicolas Appert, in 11e district of Paris.
On January 7, 2015, the Chérif brothers and Saïd Kouachi sowed death at 10 rue Nicolas Appert (11e arrondissement of Paris), murdering eleven people – including eight members of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo – before killing police officer Ahmed Merabet on Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Five years, eight months and eighteen days later, in the middle of the trial of the January 2015 attacks, Zaheer Mahmood appeared in his turn on rue Nicolas Appert, determined to target the satirical weekly which had just republished the caricatures of Mohammed.
In his vengeful madness, the 25-year-old Pakistani is unaware that after the killing of January 7, 2015, Charlie Hebdo moved. It is therefore on Paul* and Hélène*, two employees of the Premières Lignes press agency smoking a cigarette under the porch of 6 rue Nicolas Appert, that he falls on this Friday, September 25, 2020. He hears them laugh. Takes a butcher's leaf from his bag. And goes on the attack, seriously injuring his two victims. A “terrorist act”as he himself admitted at his trial, which today earned him a sentence of 30 years of criminal imprisonment as well as a permanent ban from French territory. He now has ten days to file an appeal.
“In 2020, it started again”
Coincidentally, the first days of Zaheer Mahmood's trial before the juvenile court coincided with the commemoration of ten years since the attack on Charlie Hebdo . At the hearing, several witnesses who endured the two attacks recounted this double trauma. “In 2015, we suffered the attack on Charlie. The shooting, the evacuation… I lived with these moments for five years. And in 2020, it started again,” remembers Gilles, a tall, 60-year-old man in tears at the helm. “It’s like lightning struck the same place twice.”breathes Martin, an employee of the same press agency as Paul and Hélène.
The second attack in this “place haunted by barbarism”according to the expression used by the public prosecutor during its indictment, finds its “matrix” in Pakistan, far from the 11e district, according to Me Albéric de Gayardon, the advice of Zaheer Mahmood. In Pakistan where the accused grew up “in a very religious family”. In Pakistan where a law provides for the death penalty for blasphemers. In Pakistan where, in September 2020, anti-French demonstrations broke out after the republication of the caricatures by Charlie Hebdo.
Zaheer Mahmood, who arrived in France two years earlier, lives in “a community confinement bubble”again according to his lawyer. “He is in France physically, but in his head, he is still in his country where blasphemers in the best case are arrested, in the worst are lynched.” He is also a great fan of the preachings of imam Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who heads a radical Pakistani Islamist party. In the weeks preceding his act, he did research concerning Charlie Hebdo on the Internet, and went to rue Nicolas Appert several times for scouting purposes.
“Zaheer Mahmood came to kill”
On Friday September 25, 2020, at 8:02 a.m., Zaheer Mahmood shoots a video in which he explains that he is going to “revolt” against “the caricatures on our pure and greatest beloved prophet”. Then, leaving his home in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis), he spent between 10:19 a.m. and 10:35 a.m. in a bazaar in Saint-Denis to buy a butcher's sheet, a knife and bottles of white spirit. At 11:36 a.m., he leaves the Richard-Lenoir metro station. A few dozen meters further, in the Première Ligne premises, Hélène, who had arrived early for work, meets Paul who is coming down to smoke a cigarette. The young woman decides to accompany him.
The two young people go not to the interior courtyard, as they are used to, but to the porch overlooking Rue Nicolas Appert, because of the rain which is falling that day. Carefree, they laugh at the mention of Hélène's birthday party, which took place the day before in a neighborhood bar. Shortly before 11:40 a.m., the video surveillance camera at 6 rue Nicolas Appert filmed a scene of astonishing violence, broadcast to the hearing before the juvenile court. With the blade of his butcher's leaf brandished above his head, Zaheer Mahmood strikes Paul five times, Hélène four times, then flees. He was arrested at Bastille station at 12:35 p.m.
“When I arrived there, I didn't have in mind that I was going to hurt these people. I had come to set fire to the office, says the assailant during his interrogation on the facts. When I got closer, suddenly I felt someone laughing. I thought they were people from Charlie Hebdo who made fun of me. I put down my bag, took out some butcher paper, and attacked.” A version of the facts rejected by civil party lawyers and attorneys general. “Zaheer Mahmood came to kill”insists Me Alexia Leveillé to Nizero, le conseil de Paul. “In line with his deadly convictions, Zaheer Mahmood went to rue Nicolas Appert with the firm intention of decapitating blasphemers”adds one of the representatives of the public prosecutor.
“Split skull”
For their part, despite the violence of the attack, Paul and Hélène manage to escape. The first is found in an adjacent street by Gilles. “I came across Paul sitting on a low wall, his feet in blood. He was seriously injured in the head and hand. He told me 'I feel myself leaving, I'm leaving'”traces the sixty-year-old, who, very moved, seems to relive the scene at the bar. The second is rescued by Olivier, who works nearby. “Hélène was hit in the cheek and the back of the head. I tried to talk with her to keep her conscious. She was very courageous. When the emergency services arrived and they evacuated her with her colleague, my hands and jeans were full of blood, just like in the movies.”
-Plunged into a coma by emergency services, Paul is taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière, where he undergoes emergency surgery, his vital prognosis being compromised. “A split skull, an affected brain, a face marked ad vitam aeternam, an affected left hand”, summarizes his lawyer Me Leveillé Nizerolle. The injured person regained consciousness on October 12. Admitted to Les Invalides, he remains there – full-time or in day hospitalization – until July 2021. “Today I reached the maximum of what I could do on physical rehabilitation. Now the challenge will be to get back on track psychologically. It’s going to be long”describes the thirty-year-old at the helm.
Hélène is cared for at the Georges-Pompidou hospital for a week. His injuries to his head, face and eye are treated. But little by little, “In [sa] head, something vicious is taking hold”. “For two years, I tried to rebuild a life like I had before, but I couldn’t. Today, I am 32, the age when my friends are flourishing in their work and starting to start a family. Me, I got stuck on rue Nicolas Appert », confides, in tears, the one who, throughout the hearing, never stopped “draw squares on a notebook to fix your thoughts”as explained by his lawyer Me Maud Sobel.
30 years of imprisonment required against the assailant
Four and a half years after the attack, the trial of Zaheer Mahmood and five of his compatriots begins, accused of having “motivated and supported” the attacker. The hearing is being held before the juvenile court, some of the defendants being under 18 years old at the time of the events. For two and a half weeks, in the so-called “major trials” room which was notably used for the trials of the attacks of November 13, 2015 and the assassination of Samuel Paty, Paul and Hélène, surrounded by their loved ones, once again faced to their attacker.
Tuesday January 21, at the end of a three-hour indictment, the public prosecutor requested 30 years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security period, as well as a ban on possessing a weapon for 15 years and a definitive ban on French territory against Zaheer Mahmood. The latter “must be punished most severely, commensurate with the immense seriousness of the crimes he committed, using incredible violence against his victims, causing them immense physical and psychological consequences”declares one of the attorneys general. “He associated his friends with this abject act, both ideologically and logistically”adds the magistrate, who calls for sentences ranging from 3 to 13 years of imprisonment against the five other accused.
“I ask for forgiveness from France”
This Thursday, January 23, during their last words, these five men all apologize to the victims. In jeans and a white shirt, hair and beard cut short, Zaheer Mahmood, speaking last, claims through an Urdu language interpreter to have “changed a lot”. “There is one thing that I understand well: this way of thinking in which there is hatred, revenge, anger is of no use to anyone. It only does harm,” he declared before in turn apologizing to the victims and their families, then “ask for forgiveness from France because France is the country which [l’]always supported”.
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At the trial of the attack in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo, the attacker asks “forgiveness to France”
Assurant “perfectly understand” the prospect of being “sentenced to a heavy sentence”the Pakistani asks the court for him “leave some hope of finding some semblance of life once you leave prison”. He reserves his final words for the victims, wishing them “a lot of happiness in their lives”. “I hope they can find the courage to forgive me one day”he concludes. At 9:56 a.m., the six magistrates retired to deliberate. And returned nine hours later to pronounce sentences ranging from 3 to 12 years of imprisonment for five of the accused, who faced 15 to 30 years. Zaheer Mahmood, who faced life imprisonment, is sentenced to 30 years of criminal imprisonment as well as a permanent ban from French territory.
“I don’t know if stopping [de la cour, NDLR] will allow victims to get out of rue Nicolas Appert”underlined in his indictment one of the attorneys general, referring to a declaration by Hélène. “The road to coexistence with this absolute tragedy is long. But by recognizing the guilt of the accused, by sentencing them to strong but proportionate sentences, [cette] decision will have the virtue of saying that here, justice has been done.”
*First names have been changed
