French President Francois Hollande honored 17 victims killed in Islamic extremist attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher market and police a year ago this week by unveiling plaques around Paris marking the violence that ushered in a tumultuous year.
The ceremonies yesterday come as Charlie Hebdo is releasing a special anniversary issue laced with obscene and offensive cartoons, its surviving artists and columnists vaunting their freedom to lampoon everyone from Muslim fundamentalists to children, politicians and Catholic priests.
Families of victims joined Hollande and other dignitaries near the building where Charlie Hebdo staff were holding an editorial meeting when two heavily armed brothers stormed in Jan. 7 last year, killing 11 people.
In a somber, wordless observance under a light drizzle, Hollande, flanked by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, also laid a wreath under the plaque bearing the names of the 11 victims shot dead at the newspaper’s offices in eastern Paris.
The plaque begins: “To the memory of victims of the terrorist attack against freedom of expression.”
The entourage moved on to the nearby road to unveil a plaque at the site, where one of the gunmen fleeing the scene shot a police officer, a Muslim, as he lay on the pavement.
Spraypainted on the sidewalk was a message of support for the Muslim officer, reading: “Je suis Ahmed,” or “I am Ahmed,” in the red, white and blue of the French flag.
Hollande also unveiled a plaque at the Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket where four Jewish shoppers were killed.
Charlie Hebdo’s anniversary edition accuses Islamic fundamentalists, organized religion, an irresolute government and intelligence failures for last year’s violence in France.
Charlie Hebdo director Laurent Sourisseau, who goes by the name Riss, drew the cover and wrote an editorial describing the horror he survived — and that took the lives of friends and colleagues.
He described the newsroom’s silence moments after the two gunmen opened fire, saying that was how he knew his colleagues were dead.
Riss wrote that Islamic fanatics and other religious zealots wanted Charlie Hebdo’s secular journalists to pay the ultimate price “for daring to laugh at religion.”
He insisted that the magazine would remain alive because “never have we wanted so much to break the faces of those who dreamed of our deaths.”
In a separate piece, chief editor Gerard Biard marveled that, although the Charlie Hebdo killings launched a global debate on the role of religion and free speech, no one even bothered to explain to the world why the attackers went after the kosher supermarket.
“We are so used to Jews being killed because they are Jewish,” he wrote. “This is an error, and not just on a human level. Because it’s the executioner who decides who is Jewish. Nov. 13 was the proof of that. On that day, the executioner showed us that he had decided we were all Jewish.”
The edition, on newsstands today, details the moments of horror in Paris’ 11th arrondissement in the first staff meeting of last year.
The widow of a bodyguard killed at Charlie Hebdo said on RTL radio yesterday that she wants an investigation into security measures at the paper.
Ingrid Brinsolaro said her husband “saw dysfunctions” and a lack of security in the office and “it was impossible to do his job correctly in these conditions.”
French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve said he was open to the idea of an investigation, but also defended the government’s efforts to ensure security.
Additional reporting by AFP
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