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 the following months.
Ten years to the day after the killings of January 7, 2015, Charlie Hebdo released a special 32-page issue on Tuesday. He publishes caricatures on God selected as part of an international competition launched at the end of 2024. In this issue, the weekly calls itself “indestructible” with, in the front page drawing, a reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading , delighted, this “historic” Charlie.
“Satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism. If we want to laugh, it’s because we want to live. Laughter, irony, caricature are manifestations of optimism, whatever happens, whether dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never disappear”, underlines Riss, its director, in the editorial which looks back on the last ten years marked, according to him, by a “geopolitical situation” which got “worse”.
“Today, the values of Charlie Hebdo, such as humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been so challenged. cause (…) Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces,” says the man who was injured during the attack.
Seventeen dead
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, French people of Algerian origin who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
After two days of tracking, the latter had been shot by an intervention team from the GIGN, the elite group of the French gendarmerie, in a printing house in Dammartin-en-Goële (Seine-et-Marne), where they had taken refuge.
>> The events of January 7, 2015:
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, then of four people of Jewish faith in a kosher store at Porte de Vincennes on January 9.
Nearly four million people on the streets
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, including then-French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.
-Ten years later, the commemorations organized on Tuesday will be in the presence of President Emmanuel Macron, several ministers and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. They will begin at 11:30 a.m. in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, where Charlie Hebdo had its premises in 2015, and will end at 1:10 p.m. with a tribute to the victims of the Hypercasher store.
>> Read more: Joachim Roncin tells the extraordinary story of his logo-slogan “Je suis Charlie”
Far from the records of 2015 (the number following the attack was distributed in eight million copies and subscriptions peaked at 240,000 in February), the weekly now has 30,000 subscribers and sells 20,000 copies on newsstands. Its ultra-protected premises are kept secret.
Perpetuity
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.
>> Reread: From 4 years in prison to life for the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks
Two weeks later, we learned of the death at the age of 40 of former Charlie Hebdo webmaster Simon Fieschi, seriously injured in the attack.
The same year, on November 13, France was mourned by other attacks, on an even larger scale, in the Parisian concert hall of the Bataclan and on several terraces of bars and restaurants (130 dead).
>> The full report of the attacks of November 13, 2015:
Text: Valentin Jordil with afp
