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The French satirical paper whose employees was decimated in a violent assault by Islamic extremists in 2015 is reprinting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed cited by the killers, declaring “history cannot be rewritten nor erased.” The announcement on Tuesday got here on the eve of the primary trial for the January 2015 assaults towards Charlie Hebdo and, two days later, a kosher grocery store.
The killings touched off a wave of violence claimed by the Islamic State group throughout Europe. Seventeen folks died — 12 of them on the editorial places of work — together with all three attackers.
Thirteen males and a girl accused of offering the attackers with weapons and logistics go on trial Wednesday.
In an editorial this week accompanying the caricatures, the paper finest identified for vulgar irreverence mentioned that though it had declined to publish caricatures of Mohammed for the reason that assaults, doing so for the opening of the trial was crucial.
“The only reasons not to stem from political or journalistic cowardice,” the editorial mentioned.
As the attackers, brothers Chérif and Said Kouachi, walked away from the carnage, they cried out “We have avenged the Prophet.” Claiming the assaults in the identify of al-Qaida, they then killed a wounded policeman point-blank and drove away.
Two days later, a jailhouse acquaintance of theirs stormed a kosher grocery store on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, killing 4 hostages and claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group. The Kouachi brothers had by then holed up in a printing workplace with one other hostage. All three attackers died in near-simultaneous police raids.
The grocery store attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, additionally killed a younger policewoman.
The caricatures re-published this week have been first printed in 2006 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, setting off generally violent protests by Muslims who consider depicting Mohammed is blasphemy.
Charlie Hebdo, which was then little-known outdoors France and recurrently caricatures non secular leaders from numerous faiths, republished them quickly afterwards.
The paper’s Paris places of work have been firebombed in 2011 and its editorial management positioned beneath police safety, which stays in place to at the present time.
Laurent Sourisseau, the paper’s director and one of many few employees to have survived the assault, named every of the victims in a foreword to this week’s version.
“Rare are those who, five years later, dare oppose the demands that are still so pressing from religions in general, and some in particular,” wrote Sourisseau, who’s also called Riss.
Three of the accused, together with the spouse of one of many attackers, is not going to be on the trial as a result of they’re overseas and it’s not identified in the event that they’re alive or lifeless.
Most of the 11 who will seem in court docket say they knew it was for a criminal offense however declare that they had no concept it was for mass killings.
Among these contained in the market was Lassana Bathily, an worker whose house village in Mali was simply 20 kilometers from that of Coulibaly’s.
Bathily hid a gaggle of the shop’s Jewish prospects in a chilly room and slipped out to warn police concerning the terror assault inside. Eleven days later, the unlikely hero was granted French citizenship. He is amongst practically 200 plaintiffs on the trial.
“We want to know what really happened even if the terrorists won’t be there. I hope that those who worked with them, helped them financially will be punished for what they did. That’s the only thing we expect,” Bathily mentioned.
“We want to know the truth because we don’t know anything, we’ve heard nothing for the past five years.” The world rallied behind France in the times after the killings.
Leaders from around the globe joined tens of millions of people that poured into Paris’ huge République plaza and different gathering spots in France bearing defiant indicators that learn “I am Charlie.” But the January 2015 assaults have been seen as a colossal intelligence failure for France.
At least one of many Kouachi brothers had traveled to Yemen to coach with al-Qaida. Chérif Kouachi, the youthful, acknowledged as a lot in an interview with a French tv community throughout their closing siege.
Said Kouachi was beneath surveillance till mid-2014. In a 2008 interview with Le Monde newspaper, Coulibaly himself described jail, the place he met Chérif Kouachi then awaiting trial on terrorism fees, as “the best crime school.” Their jailhouse mentor is amongst these scheduled to testify.
Afterwards, the French authorities reorganized its intelligence construction, raised the nationwide safety finances and employed a whole lot extra investigators to watch homegrown extremists.
“The opening of this trial is the moment to remember that the fight against Islamist terrorism is a major priority of the government,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin mentioned Monday in a speech on the French intelligence headquarters. “We will fight relentlessly.” The trial can be filmed for posterity, a rarity in France reserved for proceedings of historic import.
One of the three absent defendants is Hayat Boumedienne, Coulibaly’s spouse who fled to Syria days forward of the assaults. She took a starring function in certainly one of Islamic State’s propaganda blitzes, urging French Muslims, women and men alike, to observe her path.
French media reported {that a} girl who returned from Syria encountered Boumedienne final yr on the huge al-Hol camp for Islamic State households, dwelling beneath an assumed identify. Since then, the camp has seen quite a few escapes.
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