He was the first member of the Charlie editorial team to be shot by the Kouachi brothers on January 7, 2015. A survivor of the attack but disabled for life, he often testified, with modesty and humor, about his life as a survivor.
Simon Fieschi, former webmaster and community manager of the Charlie Hebdo editorial team, died this Thursday at the age of 41, confirmed to Figaro several of his relatives. During the attack against Charlie on January 7, 2015, he was the first whom the Kouachi brothers shot. A Kalashnikov bullet hit his spine and Simon Fieschi has suffered the irreparable after-effects of this tragedy for nine years. The circumstances of his death have not yet been clarified, and an investigation has been opened.
Simon Fieschi had joined Charlie in 2012. He testified on several occasions about what he experienced on January 7, 2015, notably during the trial in 2020, during which he marked the journalists present with his modesty… and his sense of humor : “I can’t give the middle finger anymore, but sometimes it itch”he declared in particular. He recently attended, as a civil party, the trial of Peter Cherif, a jihadist sentenced to life in prison for his role with one of the attackers of Charlie Hebdo.
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When the Kouachi brothers broke into the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, Simon Fieschi was immediately affected and says he then closed his eyes on the ground, believing that this reflex had ‘may have saved his life’. “I remember the door opening violently, an explosion. I remember seeing my field of vision become diagonal. I remember hearing ‘Allahu Akbar’, ‘we don’t kill women’ and I saw the two hooded men passing by.”he testified at the trial, recounting these minutes of horror engraved forever in his memory. He will only see a trail of blood, his own, of which he “don’t really understand the meaning”.
“Pains that never go away”
Simon Fieschi was then hospitalized and placed in an artificial coma for a week: he woke up after the Hyper Cacher attack and the march of January 11. His complete hospitalization would last a total of eight months, and then for several years he would continue to go to the hospital every day. He has lost motor skills, says he also experiences “pains that never go away”.
In a poignant text, entitled “Waking up in a sarcophagus in January 2015”he recounted his slow reconstruction in moving terms. “Since I couldn’t or didn’t want to die, I had to start living again”he writes in particular. Before concluding: “I learned to live with what I lost and what I have left. It’s the most difficult year of my life, and yet I have a strange nostalgia for 2015 because that’s where I was most alive, where I felt the euphoria of to be alive.”
Simon Fieschi has since married a young Australian woman: it was Anne Hidalgo who celebrated their marriage at the town hall of the 11th arrondissement. The couple had a little girl. In a recent interview given to an Australian newspaper, he confided his relief at the idea of leading a calmer life, far from caricatures and controversies, even if he was going through moments of greater psychological difficulty, and that he burns out in 2023.
Several personalities paid tribute to him, such as the deputy (PS) Jérôme Guedj, the journalist Sophia Aram, Caroline Fourest and the lawyer Juliette Méadel, former Secretary of State responsible for victim assistance under François Hollande. A special issue of Charlie Hebdo will be dedicated to him on Wednesday.
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