Charlie Hebdo attack: the assault, minute by minute

Ten years ago, to the day, twelve people lost their lives in the Kouachi brothers’ assault on the newspaper’s editorial office. Charlie Hebdo. A look back at this macabre morning of January 7, 2015, which had started so well.

The mist is cold and stubborn this Wednesday, typical of a January day in Paris. We are at rue Nicolas-Appert, in the 11th arrondissement. A “very quiet place where nothing ever happens”. It is there, at number 10, in a slightly ugly glass building that looks like a Lego, that the editors of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo meet every week.

Around the large oval table, they are almost all there. Cabu, Riss, Wolinski, Elsa Cayat, Laurent Léger. Yes, even Tignous, who arrived earlier that morning because he took his children to school. Lots of gourmets to share the cakes brought back by Coco from Fanprix, after dropping her daughter off at daycare, and Luz’s birthday cake, a marble one that Sigolène Vinson, the “pastry attendant”, was responsible for making. ‘go get it from the bakery.

Rue Nicolas-Appert, until now known for being quiet.Getty Images Europe

The atmosphere is light and joyful, questionable jokes burst out amid New Year’s wishes. And then, like every Wednesday, at 10:30 a.m., the writing session begins. The conversations revolve around Michel Houellebecq’s new book, Submissionpublished the same day. Then young French people left to wage jihad in Syria. Tignous and Bernard Maris launch into a passionate debate.

11:00 a.m.

Meanwhile, two black, massive, hooded figures, armed with Kalashnikovs, enter number 6 rue Nicolas-Appert. They are looking Charlie Hebdobut are still unaware that they have gone to the wrong address. The newspaper had moved six months earlier to new premises, almost impossible to find. Targeted by recurring threats, the team of Charliewho feared for his safety, took precautions. Armored door with code and reinforced police protection.

The attackers’ Citroën C3, a few minutes after the attack on the editorial office.Image: AP Via Associated Press Televisi

The men in black, two brothers aged 32 and 34, are called Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. They take advantage of the arrival of the postwoman, responsible for delivering a registered letter, to rush into building number 6. They will only find an audiovisual company there, the Atelier des archives. But no Charlie.

Annoyed by this mistake, the Kouachi brothers target the employees and the postwoman. A first shot comes through a glass door. Terrified, one of them communicates the exact location of the weekly.

11h25.

On the ground floor of number 10, in a small room in the building, Jérémy Ganz, employee of a maintenance company, is flanked by his colleague and friend, Frédéric Boisseau, “Fredo”. They are interrupted by the door opening and a first man who enters yelling “Charlie!”. A single shot. Without understanding, Jérémy sees the smoking cannon. He smells gunpowder. His ears are ringing. His eyes are fixed on Chérif Kouachi, who is still standing in front of him. He yelped: “We’re maintenance, it’s our first day!”

It was only once the intruders had left and the metallic smell of blood in his nostrils that he understood that Fredo had collapsed, propelled out of his chair by the violence of the shot.

The blood spreads, Jérémy looks for a place to hide. Perhaps these men in black will return to finish the job. Quick, the toilets. But carrying Fredo, immobilized, covered in blood and whose build flirts with 100 kilos, is impossible for this young diabetic lacking sugar and in a state of shock. But the energy of despair helps him drag his friend there.

11h33.

Meanwhile, on the second floor, the editorial meeting of Charlie Hebdo is coming to an end. It’s almost time to go grab a bite to eat at Petites Canailles, a bistro on rue Amelot, but the conversation continues a little longer. Distracted, Coco glances at her watch – she has to pick up her daughter from daycare. The designer gets up and places her hand on the shoulder of Tignous, sitting next to her, to tell him she is leaving, before joining the subscription manager, Angélique Le Corre. She suggests he smoke a cigarette before raising the sails.

The two women are still in the stairwell when two black figures interrupt them on their way down. An unknown voice then calls out to the designer personally.

The person concerned gets the hang of it very quickly. Charb, the publication’s director, draws weapons so well that she knows perfectly what a Kalashnikov looks like.

Always this same sentence on my lips. “We want Charlie. We want Charb.” One of the two men grabs him. You have to go back up the steps. In a state of “absolute distress,” Coco climbs to the first floor and points to the door. She thinks she has arrived at the newspaper when she realizes her mistake. They’re not on the second floor.

With the gun barrel behind her back, the 32-year-old designer thinks her mistake will cost her her life. She bends her knees, as if to kneel. “Sorry, sorry, I was on the wrong floor,” she whispers. A terrorist responds to him in a cold voice. “No jokes, otherwise we’ll shoot you.” Then, always the same refrain.

With her brain “as if paralyzed”, Coco composes the code which allows the door to Charlie Hebdo to be opened. The video surveillance images show very precisely 11:33:50 when she is pushed inside the premises by Chérif Kouachi. Simon Fieschi, the newspaper’s webmaster, is installed in the entrance. Still seated, he barely has time to see a hooded man when he hears “Allah Akbar!”. Then tock tock. Simon takes a bullet. The second misses it. He sees the group pass before losing consciousness, seriously injured.

Coco no longer interests the killers. So, the young woman takes refuge under a desk.

In the meeting room, we already understand what is happening. Franck Brinsolaro, the police officer responsible for protecting Charb, puts his hand on his hip to draw his weapon. “That’s not normal,” he murmurs, before telling Sigolène not to move. But it’s too late. The killers enter shouting the name of the publishing director, before calling out those of the members of the editorial staff. Succession of shots. Accurate. Targeted. Bodies fall. One by one.

Then, silence. A leaden silence. Taking refuge at the back of the room, Sigolène hears footsteps. A killer flushed her out. After killing his colleague Mustapha Ourrad with three bullets, he aims his Kalashnikov at her. Paralyzed, her eyes fixed on Chérif Kouachi, she has time to think that her loved ones will be sad. Since, finally, a bullet in the head, it will be “quick”.

Except that Chérif Kouachi lowers his weapon and puts his finger to his mouth. He tells her that he won’t kill her, because he doesn’t kill women. Sigolène believes she perceives a “softness” in his black eyes. He only orders him to read the Koran. In one breath, she promises yes.

11:35 a.m.

The surveillance images show 11:35:27 when Chérif Kouachi reappears in the view of the camera placed near the entrance. He then raises his index finger towards the sky. His brother Saïd opens the door and, at 11:35:36, the two terrorists leave the scene, in a cloud of powder. It took them just one minute and 49 seconds to kill eleven people.

Image: AP Reuters POOL

In the newsroom, only fog remains. A smell of metal and blood. A deathly calm. Bodies everywhere. Laurent Léger gets up and notices the pile of overturned tables and corpses. He meets the gazes of those who are still alive. Dazed, stunned.

Coco stares at Cabu’s legs. She recognizes them because of the crumbs that come out of her coat. He ate a piece of bread during the meeting. As for Sigolène, she approaches Fabrice Nicolino, who asks her to hold his hand because he “feels like he’s leaving”. The young woman looks at Bernard Maris’s houndstooth costume. A costume she doesn’t like. His brains are spilled on the ground.

Meanwhile, on the ground floor, Jérémy Ganz tries in vain to compress Fredo’s blood. His colleague and friend looks at him and asks him to tell his children that he loves them. “Afterwards, I understood that he was dead,” he recalled in court, years later, during the trial of the January 7 attacks.

Chérif and Saïd Kouachi go out, very calmly, into rue Nicolas-Appert. Arriving very late at the editorial conference and held outside the building, the designer Luz watches, petrified, as they go out backwards, in a sort of absurd choreography. The two brothers then prepare to face a first wave of police. After an exchange of fire, it was shouting “Allah akbar” that they returned to their black Citroën C3 in front of the building, at the end of the street, at the corner of Allée Verte.

It’s a little further away, Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, that Ahmed Merabet, 40, faces them. A final burst of gunfire rings out. The policeman collapses. “You wanted to kill us,” one of the two brothers spits as they approach. “No, he’s a good boss,” retorts Ahmed Merabet, perhaps in the hope of saving his life. In vain.

Ahmed Merabet, here on the ground, is the latest victim of the Kouachi brothers.Image: AP Via Associated Press Televisi

He is shot in the head. The policeman will be the twelfth and last person murdered by the terrorists, this January 7, 2015, before a two-day hunt which will end in a factory in Dammartin-en-Goële, with the attack on the GIGN and the death of the brothers Kouachi.

A few minutes, twelve victims. Frédéric Boisseau, Sodexo employee, Charb, Cabu, Wolinski, Tignous, Honoré, Elsa Cayat, Mustapha Ourrad, cartoonists, Bernard Maris, columnist, Michel Renaud, guest, Franck Brinsolaro, brigadier in charge of security, and Ahmed Merabet, police officer.

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