The French cartoonist forced by the attackers of the Charlie Hebdo weekly to let them into its offices said on Tuesday that she had been traumatized by feelings of guilt, as she recalled the horror of the January 2015 massacre.
Corinne Rey, 38, known as Coco, had gone outside on Jan. 7, 2015, for a cigarette when the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi approached her and forced her to tap in the entry code for the office as they brandished a Kalashnikov.
“I had a sense of dread,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I was in distress, I could not think anymore,” she told the trial of 14 suspected accomplices in the Jan. 7 and 9 attacks on the magazine and a Jewish supermarket that claimed 17 lives.
“I knew it was a Kalashnikov,” she said, recalling the long climb up the stairs before entering the offices of Charlie Hebdo, with the Kouachi brothers “armed to the teeth.”
“I was devastated, as if dispossessed of myself, I could no longer do anything. I moved toward the code keypad and I typed it in,” she said.
“I felt that the terrorists were approaching their goal, I felt them growing excited next to me,” Rey said.
Entering the offices, the attackers shot at Simon Fieschi, the administrator of the weekly’s Web site.
Rey said she ran to hide under a desk.
“After the shots, there was silence, a silence of death... I thought they were going to finish off the job with all the ones they hadn’t killed,” she said.
However, after killing 10 people inside the office, the attackers left, leaving behind a vision of “horror.”
“I saw the legs of Cabu. Wolinski was not moving. I saw Charb — the side of his face was extremely pale. Riss was wounded and he told me: ‘Coco, don’t worry.’”
Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, 76, Georges Wolinski, 80, and Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier, 47, were among France’s most celebrated cartoonists. All lost their lives in the massacre.
Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, was shot and wounded, but survived. He is now Charlie Hebdo’s director.
“This is the talent that was killed that day, they were models for me,” Rey said. “They were extremely kind people, who had a talent for being funny... It’s not easy to be funny, but they were able to do it very well.”
Five years later, Rey said she still struggles with the memories of the attacks as well as sensations of impotence and even guilt.
“It took me a long time to understand that I am not the guilty one. The only culprits are the Islamist terrorists. The Kouachis and those who helped them,” she told the court.
Sigolene Vinson, a former lawyer who is a legal correspondent for the weekly, was in the newsroom on the day of the attack.
She told the court how when they heard the first two shots, she exchanged looks with Charb.
“I think that Charb understood,” she said.
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