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On Sunday, January 10, 2016, French politicians and the public gathered in Paris to remember the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks.
Last year, on Sunday, January 11, a huge gathering took place in Paris.
This year’s attendance was sparse by comparison. Whereas 1.5 million people marched peacefully last year in Paris, only a few thousand went to Place de la République on Sunday.
This is probably because so many went there for a commemoration of the victims of the November 2015 attacks.
Sunday’s gathering ended a week of smaller ceremonies to remember the attack on the satirical magazine’s staff on January 7 and on the kosher supermarket on January 9.
Earlier in the week, a stone plaque with the names of Charlie Hebdo‘s victims was unveiled at the building where they used to work. It was covered up soon afterward, because cartoonist Georges Wolinski’s name was misspelled. The City of Paris is rectifying the error with the stone mason.
Wolinski’s widow Maryse was further dismayed that the French government had invited 72-year-old pop star Johnny Hallyday — the French Elvis — to sing a special memorial song during Sunday’s ceremony. Hallyday was never a favourite of the magazine’s cartoonists, who often lampooned him. It shows a certain generosity of spirit that he agreed to write the lament then perform it.
Maryse Wolinski was not the only unhappy woman remembering last year’s massacre.
Police officer Franck Brinsolaro, who guarded the late editor Stéphane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier, was also gunned down that day. The Guardian reported that his widow has filed a legal complaint over security failings.
Mrs Brinsolaro said in an interview last week on French radio:
For me, Franck was sacrificed.
She explained:
He saw the dysfunction, he rued the lack of security at the offices, he said people could slip through.
Indeed, that is also what Le Canard Enchaîné — the French equivalent of England’s Private Eye — has revealed.
The paper reported on testimony to the police which states that, three months prior to the attack, a worker in the building which housed Charlie Hebdo‘s offices saw a stranger outside who told him that the magazine’s employees were being watched because they were ridiculing Islam’s prophet. The worker later identified the stranger as Chérif Kouachi, one of the January 7 killers. Although the information months before the attack was passed on to police, it is unclear whether it was acted upon. Apparently not.
January 7 did not go unobserved by Islamic extremists. Just as French president François Hollande was addressing police in Paris — one of the commemoration events — a man brandishing a meat cleaver and shouting ‘Allah Akhbar’ was demanding to be let into the police station in the 18th arrondissement district of Goutte d’Or (‘drop of gold’). Police warned the man, also wearing a fake suicide vest, to stop. When he repeatedly ignored their instructions, they opened fire and fatally wounded him.
These two events took place at 11:30 a.m., the exact time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre last year.
As I write, the Goutte d’Or extremist’s identity has not yet been established. He was carrying no ID papers, mandatory for everyone in France, however, he did have a piece of paper with the IS flag printed on it and a note written in Arabic taking responsibility for his acts.
Initially, he was thought to have been a homeless Moroccan who was convicted of theft in the south of France in 2013. At the weekend, however, The Telegraph reported that:
people presenting themselves as his relatives have come forward and have identified the man as a Tunisian called Tarek Belgacem. They denied that he was involved in terrorism.
The French authorities have not confirmed any name but interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said he was “undoubtedly” Tunisian.
Not surprisingly, French police found a mobile phone on his person. Interestingly, it had a German SIM card.
Consequently, police have been working with their German counterparts to find out more about this man.
It transpires he had recently been living in a German refugee centre for three months before travelling to Paris.
The Telegraph article stated:
The man had stayed in refugee accommodation in Recklinghausen in the west of the country, and had reportedly painted a symbol associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) on a wall in shelter.
This case proves the difficulty in admitting ‘refugees’. The Telegraph reports (emphases mine):
The man had painted an Isil symbol on a wall in the refugee shelter in September, according to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. It is not yet known when authorities became aware of the painting.
The news magazine Spiegel Online reported meanwhile that the man, understood as having been registered as an asylum seeker, had already been classed by German police as a possible suspect after he posed at the refugee centre with an Isil flag, but he disappeared in December.
The man had given different nationalities at each registration, once saying he was Syrian, another time saying he was Moroccan, and on yet another occasion, Georgian.
The link to a refugee shelter in Germany, and the apparent ease with which the man was able to register with the authorities, risks further inflaming a debate over the 1.1 million asylum-seekers that the country took in last year.
All this comes in the wake of New Year’s Eve assaults on women not only in several cities and towns in Germany, but also Austria, Switzerland and Finland.
Of the assaults in Cologne, which took place between the city’s cathedral and main railway station:
Heiko Maas, Germany’s justice minister, said on Sunday that he suspected that the attacks in Cologne that have left the country reeling were not the result of an opportunistic mob mentality but a planned attack.
“No one can tell me that it wasn’t coordinated and prepared,” he told newspaper Bild am Sonntag. “My suspicion is that this specific date was picked, and a certain number of people expected. This would again add another dimension [to the crimes].”
Angela Merkel is once again under rightful criticism for bringing chaos to Germany and the rest of Europe.
Those who want to agree with her might wish to note the following information relating to New Year’s Eve arrests:
Police have detained for questioning a 22-year-old Tunisian, was registered at a refugee centre in a neighbouring state, while two Moroccans aged 18 and 23, were apparently in the country illegally, according to their lawyer.
“Our clients are modern nomads,” Ingo Lindemann said. “They’re not war refugees but more like grown street children who move with the flow of refugees across Europe.”
These are hardly Emma Lazarus’s ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ who arrived at Ellis Island a century or so ago.
One month after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks, censorship is returning to normal.
Charb’s rationale
Before getting into specifics, it’s worth recapping why the late Stéphane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier and his editorial team adopted the policy they did.
Until the Danish paper Jyllands Posten published the controversial cartoons of Islam’s prophet in 2005, Charlie Hebdo took religious potshots largely at traditional Catholicism. Once the furore of the Danish cartoons followed, the Charlie Hebdo team shifted their attention accordingly, although they still ridiculed Catholicism and Judaism and equally as crudely.
On January 17, 2015, the French newsweekly Marianne asked ‘Why were they so alone?’ The article has the following quotes from Charb:
If we start saying ‘we can’t draw Mohammed’, then we won’t be able to draw Muslims at all. If we yield on even one detail, freedom of expression is finished.
If we take into account the context, the global context will never be favourable with regard to laughing at radical Islam or religion in general. If we take context into account, we won’t be able to talk about anything, ever; the satirical press will be condemned and stuffed.
It is essential to remember that Charlie Hebdo drew vulgar cartoons about all three main religions, never just one.
It is interesting to note that, around the time of the attacks, in Nice, a Muslim snack shop owner’s premises was destroyed. He made the grave error of selling ham and butter sandwiches. He is determined to reopen his business.
Fallout in the United Kingdom
The first weekend in February showed the extent of British censorship.
Before detailing what happened, readers should note that only a handful of media outlets — one magazine, two or three newspapers and one or two television news stations — showed any Charlie Hebdo cartoons, mostly the poignant cover of the mid-January issue. Those who showed more understandably shied away from the most controversial drawings.
Similarly, Charlie Hebdo is not normally sold in the UK. Two press distribution companies ordered 2,000 copies of the mid-January issue to sell on to independent newsagents. Two or three shop owners were featured in the newspapers; the owners said that customers could order copies through them. However, the majority did not advertise the availability of the magazine.
The Guardian newspaper has been selling ‘Je suis Charlie’ pencil badges. It is a great idea from the perspective of defending Western values regarding freedom of expression. However, a lady from a small town in Wiltshire wrote the paper to say that anything related to Charlie Hebdo might attract police attention. Her letter was published on February 8. Excerpts follow:
Tongue in cheek, I asked my helpful newsagents to obtain a copy of the edition of Charlie Hebdo issued after the dreadful massacre in Paris, if indeed a copy was ever available in north Wiltshire …
However, two days later a member of Her Majesty’s police service visited said newsagent, requesting the names of the four customers who had purchased Charlie Hebdo. So beware, your badges may attract police interest in your customers.
On February 9, The Guardian followed up with the Wiltshire police. It turns out that this lady’s details, along with those of three others who had ordered from the same newsagent, were given to the police. All because the four ordered the special issue of Charlie Hebdo. The Wiltshire police service spokesman said that they did so to protect the newsagent in case of community tensions. It would seem as if this were a one-off in the county, but why take this action in a small town which has no community tensions? The county’s police and crime commissioner told The Guardian:
I am reassured that the force have taken the right action and permanently and securely disposed of the information gathered.
I am satisfied that there was no intention on the part of the force to seek to inhibit the circulation of Charlie Hebdo.
Concerned readers commented on the article. The most frequently mentioned concerns were whether the customers’ details really were permanently deleted and how many other counties in Britain also saw police visits to newsagents.
On Tuesday, February 10, the paper published a second article which revealed that officers in Wales and in Cheshire also questioned newsagents about people who ordered Charlie Hebdo. These newsagents did not reveal the identity of their customers and found the situation worrying.
The Guardian asked Conservative MP David Davis for his thoughts. Davis said that it was more “stupid than sinister” but added:
Quite what they think they’re doing and why they are wasting police time tracking down individual readers of Charlie Hebdo, really makes you wonder what sort of counter-terrorism and security policy those police forces are pursuing.
It also has to be said that when police forces check up on what you are reading it’s unsettling in a democracy. I’m quite sure it’s not intentionally so, but it is unsettling and not something you should do lightly.
Agreed. However, as our police have probably not seen the magazine, they do not quite understand what it is about: satire, nothing threatening.
The article went on to say that the Metropolitan Police have not been asking London newsagents for any details of customers ordering Charlie Hebdo. Furthermore, the national police organisation ACPO has not issued any general guidance on this issue, either. Thankfully.
However, on February 8, a group of 1,000 Muslims demonstrated in Whitehall and presented a petition signed by 100,000 more to No. 10 Downing Street. No doubt this is to request some sort of censorship regarding representation of their religion. It is unfortunate for the Pope that several placards carried his quote about violence towards anyone who might criticise his mother.
No British publication has ever created or reproduced characterisations of the prophet in question. Nor would they.
The protestors would have done better to travel to Paris and protest at the Elysée Palace under the auspices of a local Muslim association.
France and Belgium
Meanwhile in France and Belgium, censorship continues apace.
Marianne (Issue 929, February 6-12, 2015, pp 34-36) has an article on various artistic exhibitions which have been cancelled or postponed.
Cinema: The showing of two feature-length films, Timbuktu and l’Apôtre (The Apostle) have been postponed for the foreseeable future. Timbuktu, nominated for an Oscar and a César — and already the recipient of a Best Director award from the Lumières (Lights) awards ceremony — is not being shown because the UMP (Conservative) mayor of Villiers-sur-Marne says that Amedy Coulibaly’s wife (thought to be in Turkey or Syria at present) is from Timbuktu. Showing the film would only create tension. L’Apôtre is even more controversial; it tells the story of a young Muslim who wants to become an imam and instead converts to Christianity once he sees the baptism of a friend’s son. The director, Cheyenne Carron, says that the security police, the DGSI, cancelled showings in Neuilly (upper middle class suburb of Paris) and Nantes (Pays de la Loire, in the west of France). Marianne says that the film is now available only on DVD where people can watch it:
At home. Without bothering anyone.
Television: Guillaume Meurice, the presenter of the humour segment on Canal+’s La Nouvelle Edition, stood down after the channel’s executives refused to let him show and comment on a Charlie Hebdo cartoon.
Parti Socialiste: The French Socialist Party (PS) has been conducting a Twitter campaign, Faire Vivre la Republique: Bring the Republic to Life. They invited the famous illustrator Xavier Gorce to contribute a drawing. His anodine illustration of a woman in a burqa upset many Tweeters who saw it. The PS promptly removed it with no further explanation.
Theatre: The play Lapidée (Stoned) is to debut in March in Paris. It should have had its opening night by now but has been postponed. It tells the stories of women sentenced to death by stoning in Yemen. The play’s producer told Marianne that the police said the poster set to appear outside the theatre could incite violence. One of the actresses said:
People in the street are afraid. Everyone yelled at the top of their lungs ‘Je suis Charlie’, but when it comes to taking action, no one’s around.
Museums: In the Paris suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne, an art exhibition is taking place. However, one of the exhibits — Silence — has been withdrawn. Silence, created by the Franco-Algerian Zoulikha Bouabdellah, is an art installation which features 24 prayer mats, each with an identical pair of luxury white high-heeled shoes in the centre. A local Muslim group asked for its withdrawal saying that it could provoke ‘irresponsible incidents’. Meanwhile, in Belgium, the Hergé Museum, largely devoted to all things Asterix, has cancelled a tribute to Charlie Hebdo. The museum’s directors feared being ‘fired upon’.
Conclusion
Charb was right. Who knew such censorship would happen so soon?
This final instalment on the events of January 7 – 9, 2015, looks at two of the three police officers who were gunned down during that time in Paris.
Funeral in Martinique
Clarissa Jean-Philippe had only been on the beat for 13 days when Amedy Coulibaly shot her in Montrouge, south of the city, on the morning of January 8.
Her body was flown back to Martinique, where she was born and raised. Her funeral took place in the town of Sainte-Marie at Notre Dame de l’Assomption church on Monday, January 20.
The Mass was concelebrated by the Archbishop of Martinique, the Vicar General and her parish priest.
A large group of French and regional ministers from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana filled the church, decorated with a hundred floral wreaths from various organisations and community groups.
Bishop Michel Méranville reminded the congregation of the tremendous risk and pressure the police, emergency services and firefighters were under.
My prayers go to her family and friends, but particularly her mother. It cannot be easy burying a child, especially in such circumstances.
Charb’s police officer
Stéphane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier had police protection from the time Charlie Hebdo‘s offices had been firebombed in 2011. (This was not the same building they were in this month, although it was nearby.)
Charb’s officer, Franck Brinsolaro, died whilst trying to protect him on January 7.
Following Brinsolaro’s untimely death, Le Monde reported that protection detail takes a special type of officer:
Flexibility, discretion, he has to learn the language and habits of ‘his’ well-known public figure — that’s what they say, often affectionately, of those whom they protect. From morning to evening, they follow them, accompany them. Seventeen-hour days where they share with ‘their’ VIP the close confines of a car, but also a conversation, sometimes a meal.
Abdelhalim Benzadi, who was part of the security detail for Nicholas Sarkozy’s government, says:
We’re in that inner circle, we go on holiday with them, we know their families.
Another officer, Christophe Crépin, told the paper:
With ‘my’ public figure we no longer need to say anything, we know what each other is thinking. It’s a bit like miming.
These officers do their job so well that Charb said in an interview in 2013:
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m the one working as an officer and they’re the ones running Charlie Hebdo.
They do not necessarily look like bouncers or minders. Le Monde said that only the Glock they carry distinguishes them from anyone else.
Franck Brinsolaro’s widow Ingrid told Ouest France newspaper that her husband was:
an understated and discreet man who adored his work.
My prayers go to her and her family in the months ahead.
My apologies. I had intended to write before now about the siege of the printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goële and at Hyper Casher in Vincennes, both of which took place on January 9, 2015.
The hostages’ stories are still worth telling, even though some would consider this old news. Those involved no doubt still have vivid memories of the day. I pray they are recovering.
The Kouachi brothers’ printing plant siege
For most of the day those of us keeping up with the story had the impression that there was only one hostage at the printing company. So did Saïd and Chérif Kouachi.
When the plant’s owner Michael Catalano saw the two men approach his premises armed with AK-47s and a rocket launcher, he told his employee Lilian Lepere to hide.
Lepere, a graphic designer, went to hide in the company’s kitchen. He cooped himself up in the cabinet underneath the sink.
He stayed there, bent over from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., when the siege ended.
Whilst Catalano was reassuring the Kouachis that no one else was in the building, joking with them as a distraction and plying them with coffee, Lepere was building up the nerve to tell someone what was going on.
At one point, he had a close shave when one of the Kouachis entered the kitchen for refreshments. He opened up the refrigerator, right next to Lepere’s hiding place.
The terrorist settled on tap water from the leaky sink. Lepere told reporters:
He took a drink from the sink and I could see his shadow. My back was against the pipe and I could feel the water flowing.
It was like you see in the movies. At that point the brain stops thinking, the heart stops beating, you stop breathing.
Lepere texted his father, requesting that he notify police of what was happening. Afterward, Lepere was able to communicate directly with the police. As the terrorists spent most of the time in Catalano’s office next door, Lepere was able to text their movements and describe the layout of the building to the police.
It might sound straightforward but, as he explained:
I couldn’t use my mobile at first. I was in the foetal position and couldn’t get to it easily.
Then I took the risk. My first instinct was to turn it to silent, then vibrate but I had to make sure it wasn’t touching the cabinet.
The vibrations would have been heard.
When I got messages to my family one of them was [near to] the police so I was immediately reassured to know I was in touch with the outside world.
I knew then I could give them information with my knowledge of the plant.
And I knew that a team would come for me.
I watched the final two hours of the siege on BBC24 as it happened. Terrifying. It really was like a movie. I cannot imagine what Lepere and Catalano must have experienced. A doctor was on hand to treat them after the shootout ended.
Lepere told reporters that he was in no state to attend the rally in Paris that Sunday but that he fully supported it and was thinking of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Casher attacks.
Amedy Coulibaly’s Hyper Casher siege
At 1 p.m. the same day, Amedy Coulibaly attacked Hyper Casher in Porte de Vincennes in Paris. His siege took place simultaneously with that of the Kouachi brothers.
Four men died and, at Benjamin Netanyahu’s invitation, have been buried in Israel. Coulibaly had at least one Kalashnikov and another similar weapon which he placed on the counter. At one point, one of the victims thought he could end the situation. Coulibaly, holding the Kalashnikov, had turned his back to the hostages. The man picked the other gun up off the counter. He attempted to fire at Coulibaly but the weapon jammed, which was why Coulibaly had set it aside. Coulibaly quickly turned around and shot the man in cold blood. The other three had already been killed.
When Coulibaly entered the shop firing away, employee Lassana Bathily, a 24-year old Muslim from Mali, led a small group of customers to the back of the store and down to the basement.
The basement has two cold stores. Nearly everyone went into the same one. Unfortunately, Mikael B and his three-year old son went into the other. Coulibaly sent another shop employee down to summon anyone who was there. The employee told Mikael that he and his son would have to join the others upstairs.
Bathily was able to keep the others in the cold store before escaping in the goods lift to alert police. So that they could be as safe and comfortable as circumstances permitted, he turned off the electricity and shut the door. Two children were there with their parents: an 11-month old baby and a toddler. Both were in good health upon release five hours later.
The mother of one of the hostages knew where her son Ilan was. Instead of risking putting him in danger by texting him, she contacted the police and gave them Ilan’s phone number. This helped police track his and the other hostages’ precise location.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Mikael B said that he and his son witnessed the shooting of the fourth victim. Coulibaly told Mikael to call the media. Mikael’s little boy cried, calling Coulibaly a ‘bad man’. Mikael followed the terrorist’s instructions, and Coulibaly had successive conversations with various media outlets. In at least one, he admitted to killing the policewoman the day before and said he was working with the Kouachis, who had committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre and, that afternoon, were at the printing shop.
Afterward, Mikael turned his phone off. Then, discreetly, he turned it back on and rang the police. He kept his phone on the rest of the afternoon. Near the end of the drama, Mikael said:
It was obvious that the terrorist was preparing to die. He said it was his reward. He had a weapon in each hand and boxes of cartridges nearby. He suddenly began to pray.
My mobile was still on. The police had heard it all. Minutes later the shop grille was lifted. We knew it was the start of the assault.
Up to this moment, the grille at the front door had been down. This, too, was an incredible action-film ending. As I watched it on BBC24, a security specialist guided viewers through what was happening.
The grille went up slowly, then the police threw three flares through the entrance. The security specialist said that these would not harm anyone. However, they would be dazzled and deaf for 30 to 60 seconds, giving police just enough time to get Coulibaly. He ran towards the entrance. Police fired at him. He collapsed.
The survivors, meanwhile, had crouched on the floor, as per police instructions given to Mikael earlier. They thanked the special forces who ended the operation. The Telegraph reported:
The special forces found that Coulibaly had booby trapped the store, leaving a door packed with several kilos of explosives. They also found that he had on him a stockpile of ammunition, submachine guns and automatic weapons.
“The hostages all thanked us,” said Jean-Pierre. “Some of my colleagues had tears in their eyes.”
And, after a day of rest, he was back at work – providing security for the massive solidarity march through Paris.
“I haven’t watched the video of the assault yet,” he said. “I think I might wait a bit.”
Afterward, the hostages in the basement told Lassana Bathily how grateful they were to him for keeping them safe during the tragic ordeal.
Tomorrow’s post has his story.
Meanwhile, the Nouvel Observateur reports that Hyper Casher’s manager Patrice Oualid cannot stop thinking about what happened that day. Coulibaly’s gunfire grazed his arm, and he ran out the back of the shop to get emergency help. If the bullet had hit him differently by a millimeter, he would have died:
I’m alive. My friends are dead. It isn’t easy. I left the shop because I wanted to save my own skin. I rerun the events of that day every night. I’m thinking. I can’t sleep. I keep seeing images and asking myself what I should have done.
Hyper Casher’s owner wants him to reopen the shop to show that the terrorists haven’t won. But Oualid doesn’t want to go back. Nor, he says, do the women behind the tills.
Oualid is now thinking of moving to Israel:
France is my country. I was born here. It was great living here, but no longer. [Israel] is a country at war, true, but it knows how to defend itself.
My prayers go to these survivors and their families.
Families of dead terrorists can have problems if they request burial ground in their country of origin.
After Mohammed Merah — who murdered four paratroopers and one Jewish schoolgirl in 2012 — was shot dead by police following a lengthy stake-out, his family asked for permission to bury him in Algeria. Algerian officials refused their request, even though his father was living there. Merah was buried in Toulouse, the city of his birth.
The family of Amedy Coulibaly — who killed four at Hyper Casher and a policewoman the day before — asked officials in Mali for permission to bury him there. Coulibaly was born in Juvisy-sur-Orge near Paris but his parents were born in Mali. Malian officials refused, giving no explanation. He was buried on Friday, May 23, in Thiais, a Paris suburb.
As for the Charlie Hebdo killers, Saïd Kouachi was buried in Reims on Friday, January 16. Chérif Kouachi was buried in the Paris suburb of Gennevilliers at midnight on Saturday, January 17. According to reports, no one attended, not even his wife. Kouachi’s grave is unmarked, possibly to deter similar-minded persons from making pilgrimages to see it.
Under normal circumstances, an unmarked grave is not unusual in Islam. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was buried on January 23 in such a manner. It is in keeping with Wahhabi customs.
This week, pundits on France’s RMC’s mid-morning show Les Grandes Gueules (The Big Mouths) have been debating how far freedom of speech should go.
On Monday, January 19, opinion was divided among them and those ringing in:
– Charlie Hebdo should continue as they are.
– Charlie Hebdo should stop publishing cartoons of Islam’s prophet; anything else they do is acceptable.
– A phone-in poll on the subject started with 42% of respondents saying they objected to Charlie Hebdo cartoons of said prophet; ten minutes later, 52% were opposed.
RMC’s hosts and panellists discussed the Pope’s prounouncement insinuating that an insult should be met with physical violence. They were surprised and bemused.
His comment was breathtakingly weird:
Gesturing towards Alberto Gasparri, a Vatican official who organises pontifical trips and who was standing next to him on board the plane, he said: “If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch in the nose.”
He then went further and said that no one should make fun of religion. Those who do should expect the worst:
They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.
What about what a lot of us who are 50+ were taught at home: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’? Nor will cartoons, for that matter.
An article in Le Monde asked if there was a difference between offensive cartoons and the anti-semitic speech of the controversial French comedian Dieudonné. With regard to the latter, anti-Semitic speech and text are illegal. That said, some judicial decisions against him have been overturned. Therefore, even when there are laws, nuances abound.
Charlie Hebdo, too, has fallen foul of the law. Le Monde‘s article has a bar chart of the number of lawsuits brought against them since 1992. They had none in 2014 and five other years. Their peak year was 1998, when ten formal complaints were filed.
Another article provides detail on the lawsuits. Most came from ‘far right’ political parties, then from the media and Catholic organisations, then from Muslim groups. After the Millennium, the magazine won most of its cases, citing French legislation guarding freedom of the press.
Going back to the Pope’s statements, he — and many others in the West — lay the blame at cartoonists’ feet. I would ask:
What did the victims of the kosher supermarket attack do to offend anyone? Nothing.
What did the policewoman killed in cold blood on January 8 do to offend anyone? Nothing.
Granted, the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly had different targets. The former were notionally defending their prophet and the latter targeted police and Jewish people. However, gratuitous violence will continue and more innocent people will die — whether we do anything offensive or not.
It’s odd that no one is talking any more about how offensive these three men were in killing law-abiding Frenchmen and women. The narrative has turned inward once again to ‘How can we law-abiding, reasonable people stop offending others?’
Our politicians are not helping, either. The same things are being said now in France which were said in 2001 in the US and in 2005 in the UK. In the latter case, in 2006, the Labour government issued a sweeping hate crimes law in response to pressure from the Muslim community after the London bombings when the rest of us were still reeling in shock and sadness. No one wanted reprisals. We just wanted to mourn our dead.
It’s hard to disagree with this sentiment from a National Review reader:
I don’t know what’s more insulting. That some [person] thinks he’s superior to me because his parents raised him in a certain religion or that my own government thinks that if they mention this religion after terrible things happen, I’ll go out and start murdering its adherents.
Yes, the fact that our governments do not seem to trust us is worrying — and rather offensive.
After the Charlie Hebdo shootings on January 7, 2015, one of their journalists, Sigolène Vinson, told the media about her conversation with one of the terrorists.
Vinson said the gunman told her:
I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself.
The New York Times reported these words then revised their copy to this:
You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.
The Daily Mail has the quote as follows:
Don’t be afraid. calm down. I’m not going to kill you. You are a woman. We don’t kill women.
But think about what you are doing. What you are doing is bad. I am sparing you, and because I am sparing you, you will read the Koran.
In discussing the NYT‘s revision, The Daily Caller says the newspaper is being disingenuous (H/T: Heidelblog).
In doing a bit of research, I found an article at Marianne, a French newsweekly. Vinson gave the magazine an interview to revise her earlier, more immediate recollection on the day because:
I was in a state of shock when … the emergency services arrived. It is for that reason that the initial words attributed to me do not reflect what I experienced.
The quote Vinson gave Marianne is exactly what the Daily Mail printed.
Yes, the New York Times is being disingenuous in leaving out the bit with regard to the Koran.
And the terrorist was also being disingenuous in saying he and his partner did not kill women. Elsa Cayat, a Jewish psychoanalyst who wrote a fortnightly column for Charlie Hebdo, was one of their victims.
Discussion continues between governments and private citizens on how best to respond to the Charlie Hebdo, printing plant and Kosher hypermarket attacks, which France’s prime minister Manuel Valls said was unprecedented:
Never before has France had three attacks in three days.
A number of people online think that newspapers should have the guts to reprint the offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons. One German newspaper, the Hamburger Morgenpost (Hamburg Morning Post), did that very thing on Thursday, January 8, 2015, with the headline:
This much freedom must be possible!
In the early hours of Sunday, January 11, their offices were firebombed. Fortunately, the damage did not prevent staff from continuing to work there.
Local and international support and sympathy for freedom of expression as well as the victims of the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly culminated in a historic afternoon in Paris and elsewhere in France.
A march from Place de la République to Place de la Nation on Sunday, January 11, was one of the largest gatherings in the city’s history. One and a half million people, including 44 heads of state and senior government officials from other countries, took part. (The only other time this number of people gathered in Paris was in 1998, when France won the World Cup.)
Two and a half million more people gathered in towns and cities throughout France. That 4 million people in total turned out is a first.
Oddly, the United States sent their ambassador to France to the demonstration. Eric Holder had met with representatives from the other governments, including Egypt and Turkey earlier in the day at a special security summit but did not take part in the march. The French expected better, especially since, on Wednesday, John Kerry repeated his lengthy condemnation of the terrorist attacks in perfect French.
The next day, Monday, the ‘I am Charlie’ mantra signifying unity splintered a bit. Whilst everyone agrees in principle that freedom of expression and stopping terrorism is vital, questions remain. How much freedom of expression should be allowed? How can we stop young people becoming involved in terrorism? Do people identify themselves by their nationality first or by their religion?
A number of Muslims have posted comments online saying that there are limits to freedom of expression and that an image of the prophet must never be shown.
One caller to RMC’s morning talk show said she identified as a Muslim first, which led to a rather vociferous exchange between her and the left-wing panel.
Afterward, the panel disagreed on the ways in which terrorism could be stopped. One said it was only through laws and government policies. Another, a teacher, said radicalisation had to be stopped at home and in school. This, too, got everyone raising their voices.
Meanwhile, in the UK on BBC1’s Sunday Politics, the debate focussed on surveillance powers. Should the public have fewer liberties, particularly online, so that terrorist cells can be better infiltrated?
Conservative MP David Davis, the guest at the end of the show, said that the government and security agencies currently have all the powers they need. He said that they need to work more intelligently with what they have.
I agree with David Davis. I hope this was the message at the security summit in Paris.
We do not need further restrictions on our freedoms, which are being eroded by the day. We do need more considered handling of and targeting of sensitive information relating to terror networks.
And, somehow, our young people need to move away from the idea that zealotry is a good thing.
On Friday, January 9, 2015, after 53 hours, French security forces shot the three French terrorists, all of whom died on the scene.
Security police and the waiting game
During the final hours of the siege, I tuned into the BBC’s news channel. The commentators who are security experts said that the police had to take their time, otherwise more carnage could result.
The terrorists would have been running on adrenaline for much of the time. They would have to calm down before the police could arrest or kill them. Hence, the lengthy stand-offs at the small printing plant in Dammarin-sur-Goële north of Paris and at the Kosher hypermarket in Vincennes, just east of the capital.
Although the terrorists were well-trained and comfortable killing innocent people in cold blood, they were not perfect in their crime. Saïd Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo assassins, accidentally left his ID in the first car he and his brother Chérif stole in the getaway. Chérif’s fingerprints were all over one of the Molotov cocktails found in the same vehicle.
Paris’s prosecutor, François Molins, released their names to the media on Wednesday night. However, Le Monde reported on Friday that he was disappointed that all the media outlets began broadcasting the suspects’ names. Molins said he was hoping the police could surprise them instead. In which case, why did he reveal the names in the first place? Perhaps this is a lesson for police departments for the future.
There were 82,000 French police and military special forces involved in tracing these three suspects or protecting the public. The Kouachi brothers fled Paris to the north, stopping in Picardy and the Champagne regions. They then drove south and were in the huge forest of Retz for a time before stopping at the printing plant on Friday.
Another 78,350 police from the rest of the country were deployed in their local areas. The government’s anti-terrorist Plan Vigipirate is still in operation and no doubt will be for the foreseeable future.
The immediate operation tracking down the Kouachi brothers and their associate Amedy Coulibaly had to be well co-ordinated in order to make it as safe as possible for the hostages. The security experts on the BBC news channel lauded the efforts of the police at both sites, particularly at the printing plant. The Kouachis had not harmed their hostage and, at the end of the siege, he was reportedly in good health.
It is difficult in a hostage situation not to have an injury or death. Coulibaly killed four people at the kosher hypermarket. Two young children were there at the time. The day before, south of Paris, Coulibaly killed Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a police officer who had only been in the job for 13 days. It is thought that Coulibaly had intended to attack a Jewish school in the neighbourhood.
Security experts on the BBC found the French police work in co-ordinating the final minutes of the siege praiseworthy for the short period of time between the shootings at the printing plant and the supermarket. Too long a gap after the printing plant would have had an adverse effect on Coulibaly’s siege at the supermarket.
Troubled backgrounds
Before becoming involved with Islamic extremists, Chérif Kouachi hung around with a group of his peers and committed petty larceny involving theft and small-scale drug trafficking. He was known for his violence and impulsiveness. He was closest to Saïd. Their parents are no longer alive, although they have a sister and a brother.
Their friends in the 19th arrondissement of Paris followed Chérif’s lead in becoming involved in radical Islam.
In his youth, Coulibaly, originally from the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge, also engaged in theft and drug trafficking. A psychiatric report prepared for a Parisian court stated that he had
an “immature and psychopathic personality” and “poor powers of introspection”.[3]
His wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, is still on the run and is thought to have left France just days before the attacks. She, too, had a difficult childhood:
She told detectives in 2010: “I was placed in care at the age of 12, because I did not accept the speed with which my father remarried after the death of my mother. I changed carers numerous times because I was beaten often.”
These four, as well as Cherif Kouachi’s wife — and their friends — saw extreme Islam as the answer to their problems.
Extreme anything — religion or politics — doesn’t really solve any problems. It merely results in death and destruction. That seems to be motivation enough for people of troubled backgrounds.
This is why a good family environment is so important.
Tomorrow’s post will look at the demonstration and march in Paris which took place on Sunday, January 11.
For those unable to follow all the events as they happen, the Telegraph has a good live blog, which the paper started just after the Charlie Hebdo attack took place on Wednesday, January 7, 2015.
This is the list of those who were murdered in cold blood by a religious terrorist or two with a Kalishnikov (12:35 p.m., Thursday, January 8):
• Charb – (real name Stéphane Charbonnier) 47, an artist and publisher of Charlie Hebdo
• Cabu – (real name Jean Cabut) 76, the lead cartoonist for Charlie Hebdo
• Georges Wolinski – 80, an artist who had been drawing cartoons since the 1960s
• Tignous – (real name Bernard Verlhac) 57, a member of Cartoonists for Peace
• Bernard Maris – (known as “Uncle Bernard”) 68, an economist and columnist for the magazine
• Honoré – (real name Philippe Honoré) 73, the artist who drew the last cartoon tweeted by the weekly publication
• Michel Renaud – a former journalist who was visiting the Charlie Hebdo offices
• Mustapha Ourrad – a copy-editor for Charlie Hebdo
• Elsa Cayat – a columnist and analyst for Charlie Hebdo
• Frederic Boisseau – a building maintenance worker
• Franck Brinsolaro – 49, a policeman appointed to head security for Charb
• Ahmed Merabet – 42, a police officer and member of the 11th arrondissement brigade
Taken together, one letter of everyone’s name spells out that of the magazine. Michèle Laroque came up with this creation (16:45, Thursday):
Franck Brinsolaro’s brother, Philippe — also a policeman — said (12:50, Thursday):
The whole of France must rise up.
What needs to be said is that faced with the horror that struck our country yesterday, the whole of France must rise up against it. One cannot attack the freedom of expression in this way, attack the authority of the State.
Charlie Hebdo is a magazine which Christians would not purchase. Most of the cartoons are over the top for true believers. The magazine was first published in 1970, when the spirit of 1968’s student demonstrations in Paris — socio-political, anti-faith and somewhat anarchistic — was still very much alive and well. That said, the magazine pokes fun at everyone and everything in the news.
The publication made fun of extreme Islam in 2006, 2011 and 2012. Their offices were firebombed in 2011. Charb received police protection after that time. Regardless, he was not intimidated and spoke — or is that penned? — his mind. He encouraged his contributors to be bold and controversial. They had points to make, principles to uphold. Charb’s philosophy was encapsulated in a saying attributed to Winston Churchill and others during the Second World War (16:23, Thursday):
Despite the praise most of the media are giving Charlie Hebdo, none of them dares to reproduce the most controversial of cartoons, an act which could cause someone else’s death at the hands of terrorists.
A journalist writing for the Financial Times initially accused the magazine of editorial irresponsibility. When readers complained via Twitter, the article was edited to reflect a tone more in keeping with the brutal murders of five of the most gutsy magazine people the world has ever seen. Regardless of whether we agree with them, we might not see their likes again.
In a similar vein, The New York Times has declined to reprint what Charlie Hebdo cartoonists gave their lives for:
The New York Times has chosen not to reprint examples of the magazine’s most controversial work because of its intentionally offensive content.
Strangely prescient, this cartoon by Charb appeared in the edition published the day he was gunned down, Wednesday, January 7, 2015. In English, the words are:
STILL NO ATTACKS IN FRANCE
‘Wait! We have until the end of January to extend our wishes [for the New Year].’
Wow.
Yet, in that same issue, the magazine made fun of controversial French author Michel Houllebecq, whose latest book, Submission, landed on bookshop shelves on January 6. Houllebecq’s futuristic novel predicts an Islamic government in France in 2022 with a French centrist prime minister, François Bayrou. Bayrou is a real-life centrist politician. Charlie Hebdo‘s cover features a caricature of Houllebecq saying:
In 2075, I’ll lose my teeth. In 2022, I’ll observe Ramadan.
Trust me, you don’t want to see the rest of the cover, which has a smaller, explicit picture of the birth of our Lord.
This is what I mean about Charlie Hebdo. Those who are offended by it just shouldn’t look at it. There is no reason to murder the magazine’s staff over it.
As I mentioned on Wednesday, Charb had police protection after Charlie Hebdo‘s old offices were firebombed in 2011 after they published a cartoon which offended extreme Muslims. What happened recently to cause a gap in security resulting in his death?
Le Monde asked the police on January 8. The police department of Paris told the paper that in August 2014, they agreed with Charb and the editorial board that the threat of attack appeared to have diminished. As a result, they kept in frequent touch with Charb by phone.
No one felt threatened, except in October 2014, however, that uneasiness passed and life went on.
Until January 7, 2015.
What will happen next? I do not think anything significant will happen, other than that the assassins — an ancient Arabic word, by the way — will be found. Hand-wringers will plead for ‘tolerance’ and encourage other Europeans not to ‘stigmatise others’ (because, by definition, we’re all racist or faithist [irony alert]) . The French female panellist on RMC’s morning talk programme, Les Grandes Gueules, asked for both and was, happily, met with stony silence by the male hosts and their fellow panellists, all equally leftist but conscious of the fact that the more conservative callers would ring in with considered comments.
As a few of the comments responding to Le Monde‘s reporting on the Financial Times‘s initial reaction said (paraphrased), ‘We’re already censoring ourselves in a variety of ways. Sometimes the media censor us. Other times, the law prohibits us. What more can we do? Pretty soon, we won’t be able to say anything.’
Here in the UK, we have the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. It may well prohibit some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons being shown in full here, even to illustrate a principle of free speech.
In closing, as I said on Wednesday, this attack could indicate a mental disorder of sorts on the part of the assassins, just as in other terrorist attacks of this kind. Malek Chabel, a Muslim anthropologist, psychoanalyst and author spoke to RMC’s Eric Brunet on the afternoon of January 8. He said these extremists were likely to be just as dysfunctional as fanatical; the dysfunctionality might have enabled the fanaticism. You can read more of what Chabel — and other French Muslims — had to say on my post for Orphans of Liberty.
In closing, my sincere condolences go to family and friends of the police officer slain on the morning of January 8 in Montrouge, south of Paris. That lady, trying to help the occupants of two cars involved in an automobile collision, was Clarissa Jean-Philippe (17:00, Thursday):
The 27-year-old died when she was was on patrol as a municipal police officer in the suburb of Montrouge – a middle class area in the south of Paris.
Originally from Martinique, she was shot in the head by the attacker who then escaped.
She died on the scene.
Churchmouse Campanologist 