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Charlie Hebdo shooting
Police officers, emergency vehicles, and journalists at the scene some two hours after the shooting.
Location	10 Rue Nicolas-Appert, 11th arrondissement of Paris, France
Coordinates	48.85925°N 2.37025°E / 48.85925; 2.37025
Date	7 January 2015 (2015-01-07) 11:30 CET (UTC+01:00)
Target	Charlie Hebdo employees
Attack type	Mass shooting, terrorism
Weapons	AK-47 assault rifles Pump action shotgun Rocket-propelled grenade
Deaths	12
Injured	11
Perpetrators	Saïd and Chérif Kouachi

On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 CET (10:30 UTC), two masked gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France. They killed 12 people, including the editor Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, 7 other Charlie Hebdo employees, and 2 National Police officers, and wounded 11 others. Charlie Hebdo had attracted attention for its depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

The gunmen were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun, and an RPG launcher. They fired up to 50 shots with automatic weapons, shouting "Allahu Akbar", Arabic for "God is great".

Police detained several people during the manhunt for the two main suspects. A third suspect gave himself up, and was not charged. The assailants were described by police as "armed and dangerous", and the threat level in Île-de-France and Picardy was raised to its highest possible status. On 9 January, police tracked the assailants to an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële, where they took a hostage.

Another gunman also took hostages, at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes. GIGN (a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces), RAID (a special operations unit of the French Police) and BRI conducted simultaneous raids in Dammartin and at Porte de Vincennes; three terrorists were killed, and some hostages were injured or killed. Four hostages were killed in the Vincennes supermarket before the police intervention. A fifth suspect is still on the run. A total of 17 people were killed at four locations between 7 and 9 January, plus the 3 suspects; at least 21 others were injured, some critically. The attacks are the deadliest act of terrorism in France since the 1961 Vitry-Le-François train bombing by the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS).

On 11 January 2015, up to 2 million people including more than 40 world leaders, streamed into the heart of Paris for a rally of national unity to honour the 17 victims. In all, 3.7 million people joined demonstrations nationwide, in what officials called the largest public rally in France since World War II. The phrase Je suis Charlie (Error: {{language with name/for}}: missing language tag or language name (help)) has come to be a common worldwide sign of solidarity against the attacks. The remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo announced that publication was to continue, with plans for a print run of 1 million copies for the next week's issue, rather than its typical 60,000. The "survivors' issue" of Charlie Hebdo will also be sold outside France.

Background

Charlie Hebdo satirical works

Main article: Charlie Hebdo

Image of 3 November 2011 cover of Charlie Hebdo, renamed Charia Hebdo (Sharia Hebdo). The word balloon reads "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!"

A Muslim woman in Paris holds up a Quran during a march against the publication of caricatures of Muhammad, February 2006.

The former building of Charlie Hebdo after it was set on fire in 2011.

Charlie Hebdo (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁli ɛbdo]; French for Weekly Charlie) is a satirical weekly newspaper in France that features cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication is irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, is strongly secularist, antireligious and left-wing, and publishes articles that mock far-right politics, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism and Israel, politics, culture, and various other groups as local and world news unfolds. The magazine was published from 1969 to 1981, then has been again from 1992.

The newspaper has a history of attracting controversy, and was unsuccessfully sued in 2006 by Islamic organizations for having published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. The cover of a 2011 issue, dubbed "Charia Hebdo" (a pun on Islamic Sharia law), depicted a cartoon of the founder of Islam, Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden in some interpretations of Islam. The newspaper's office, at the time in the 20th arrondissement, was fire-bombed and its website hacked. Religion has been a primary target of the magazine, and two years before the attack, Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier stated, "We have to carry on until Islam has been rendered as banal as Catholicism."

In 2012, the newspaper published a series of satirical cartoons of Muhammad, including nude caricatures; this came days after a series of violent attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East, purportedly in response to the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims, prompting the French government to close embassies, consulates, cultural centers, and international schools in about 20 Muslim countries. Riot police surrounded the newspaper's offices to protect it against possible attacks.

Cartoonist Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier was the editor-in-chief from 2009 until he was killed in the shooting. In 2013, al-Qaeda had added him to its most wanted list, along with three Jyllands-Posten staff members: Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste, and Flemming Rose.

Muslims in France

Since the 1960s, the Muslim population of European countries such as France and Germany has been growing. By the time of the shooting, the Muslim population of France had surpassed 5 million The Paris metropolitan area was estimated to have a minimum of 1.7 million Muslims in 2004.

27 per cent of the French public have anti-Muslim opinions according to a May 2014 Pew Research survey.

Laïcité and blasphemy

See also: Islam and blasphemy

In France, laïcité was enshrined in the 1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State. Under the term of laïcité, individuals are all free to practice the religion of their will in private sphere, and are required to keep religion from the public sphere. Authors, humorists, cartoonists, and individuals have the right to satirize people, public actors, and religions, which is balanced by defamation laws. These rights and legal mechanisms were designed and used to protect freedom of speech from local powers, among which was the then powerful Catholic Church in France .

On the other hand, some Muslims claim that the satire of religion, of religious representatives and—above all—of the Muslim prophet is forbidden blasphemy in Islam and can be punished by death. According to the BBC, France (like Germany and Britain) has seen "the apparent desire of some younger, often disaffected children or grandchildren of immigrant families not to conform to western, liberal lifestyles – including traditions of religious tolerance and free speech." Some school students expressed support for the killing of "those [of the cartoonists] who insulted Mohammad".

Shooting

Attack

On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 CET (10:30 UTC), two masked gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun, and a RPG launcher stormed Charlie Hebdo's Paris headquarters. They opened fire with automatic weapons while shouting "Allahu Akbar", as captured in a video. They shot and killed 11 people (10 in the offices and 1 maintenance worker), and wounded 11 others. Two of those killed were police officers.

Before the shooting, the gunmen burst into number 6 Rue Nicolas-Appert, where the magazine's archives were based. The gunmen shouted, "Is this Charlie Hebdo?", before realising they had the wrong address and left. They then went to the magazine's headquarters at number 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert. Outside, they encountered cartoonist fr. She reported the two armed and hooded men spoke perfect French and threatened to kill her toddler daughter whom she had just picked up from day care if she did not type in the code to open the door to the building.

The armed men sprayed the lobby with gunfire immediately upon entering the building. Maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau was the first victim of the attack, who was slain as he sat at a welcome desk. The gunmen then forced Rey at gunpoint to lead them to a second-floor office, where staff members were in an editorial meeting. She witnessed the murders of Wolinksi and Cabu inside of the first room entered before she hid under a desk. She survived uninjured. There was a pause in gunfire before the attackers moved to the meeting room where 15 people were present.

Journalist Laurent Léger survived by hurling himself under a desk without being seen as the gunmen entered. He related that he and the rest of the group thought the prior gunfire on Wolinski and Cabu was a joke prank played out with firecrackers. The gunmen burst into the main room and called out Charb's name to target him before opening fire on the group. The shooting lasted five to ten minutes. The gunmen aimed at heads and killed their victims execution-style. Other witnesses reported that the gunmen identified themselves as belonging to Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Columnist Elsa Cayat was the only female slain. A female journalist, Sigolène Vinson, survived and stated that one of the shooters aimed at her but spared her life. The attackers displayed a reluctance to harm women and told her that, "I'm not killing you because you are a woman and we don't kill women but you have to convert to Islam, read the Qu'ran and wear a veil." She said he then left, shouting, "Allahu akbar, allahu akbar."

An authenticated video surfaced on the Internet, showing two gunmen and a wounded police officer, Ahmed Merabet, after an exchange of gunfire. The wounded officer was lying in pain on a sidewalk near the corner of Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and Rue Moufle, 180 metres (590 ft) east of the main crime scene. One gunman ran towards the policeman and shouted, "Did you want to kill me?" The policeman answered, "No, it's good, chief", and raised his hand toward the gunman, who shot the policeman in the head at close range, killing him. After murdering Merabet, who was a fellow Muslim, the gunmen were heard briefly discussing his death. "It's all good. He wasn't Algerian," they said. It turned out that Merabet actually was of Algerian descent. Thousands of people would later pay tribute to Merabet and called him a hero.

The gunmen then left the scene, shouting, "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!" They escaped in a getaway car, and drove to Porte de Pantin, hijacking another car on the way (corner of Rue de Meaux and Passage de la Brie), forcing its driver out. As they drove away, they ran over a pedestrian and shot at responding police officers.

It was initially believed there were three suspects. One identified suspect turned himself in at a Charleville-Mézières police station. Seven acquaintances of the Kouachi brothers were also taken into custody. Jihadist flags and Molotov cocktails were found in an abandoned getaway car, a black Citroën C3.

Motive

Hatred for Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, which made jokes about Islamic leaders as well as Muhammad, is considered to be the principal motive for the massacre. Former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell, proposed that the motive of the attackers was "[a]bsolutely clear: trying to shut down a media organization that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad".

In March 2013, Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, commonly known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released a hit list in an edition of their English-language magazine Inspire. The list included Stéphane Charbonnier and others whom AQAP accused of insulting Islam. On 9 January, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula confirmed responsibility for the attack in a speech from AQAP's top Shariah cleric Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari. The reason given was to gain "revenge for the honor" of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Victims

Killed

• Frédéric Boisseau, 42, building maintenance worker for Sodexo, killed in the lobby
• Franck Brinsolaro, 49, Protection Service police officer, assigned as a bodyguard for Charb
• Cabu (Jean Cabut), 76, cartoonist
• Elsa Cayat, 54, psychoanalyst and columnist of Jewish religion. The only woman killed at Charlie Hebdo. Appearing on CNN, Cayat's cousin speculated about the killing, stating the killers "spared all the women, and she was the only one killed, and she was the only one [of the women who was] Jewish", and that Cayat had been receiving anonymous phone calls for a while, being told, "[D]irty Jew you should stop working for Charlie Hebdo otherwise we're gonna kill you."
• Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier), 47, cartoonist, columnist, and editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo. His partner, former government minister Jeannette Bougrab, reported to the media, "I always knew he was going to die like Theo van Gogh".
• Philippe Honoré, 74, cartoonist
• Bernard Maris, 68, economist, editor, and columnist
• Ahmed Merabet, 42, a Muslim police officer of Algerian descent, shot in the head as he lay wounded on the ground outside
• fr, 60, Muslim copy-editor of Algerian descent.
• Michel Renaud, 69, guest at the meeting
• Tignous (Bernard Verlhac), 57, cartoonist.
• Georges Wolinski, 80, cartoonist born in Tunisia of Jewish descent

• Charlie Hebdo shooting victims
• 
  Cabu in 2012
• 
  Elsa Cayat
• 
  Charb in 2011
• 
  Tignous in 2008
• 
  Wolinski in 2011
• 
  Honoré (cartoon by Odile Jacquin)

Wounded

• Simon Fieschi, 31, webmaster — shot in the shoulder, with the bullet hitting spinal vertebrae and perforating a lung; he is in an induced coma after surgery
• Philippe Lançon, journalist — shot in the face and in critical condition
• Fabrice Nicolino, 59, journalist — shot in the leg
• Laurent Sourisseau, 48, cartoonist — shot in the shoulder
• Unidentified police officers

Three people at the meeting were unharmed: Gérard Gaillard, who was a guest, and two staff members, fr and fr. The cartoonist who arrived late and was coerced into letting the shooters inside the building was fr, also unharmed.

The attacks are the deadliest act of terrorism in France since the 1961 Vitry-Le-François train bombing by the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS), a French dissident paramilitary organization opposed to the independence of Algeria during the Algerian War (1954–62), when 28 people died.

Suspects

Saïd and Chérif Kouachi

Saïd Kouachi
Born	Saïd Kouachi (1980-09-07)7 September 1980 Paris, France
Died	9 January 2015(2015-01-09) (aged 34)
Cause of death	Gunshot wound
Nationality	French
Motive	Jihadism
Details
Date	7–9 January 2015
Location(s)	Charlie Hebdo offices
Target(s)	Charlie Hebdo staff
Killed	12
Injured	11
Weapons	AK-47

Chérif Kouachi
Born	Chérif Kouachi (1982-11-29)29 November 1982 Paris, France
Died	9 January 2015(2015-01-09) (aged 32)
Cause of death	Gunshot wound
Nationality	French
Motive	Jihadism
Details
Date	7–9 January 2015
Location(s)	Charlie Hebdo offices
Target(s)	Charlie Hebdo staff
Killed	12
Injured	11
Weapons	AK-47

French police identified Saïd Kouachi (French pronunciation: [sa.id kwa.ʃi]; 7 September 1980 – 9 January 2015) and Chérif Kouachi ([ʃe.ʁif]; 29 November 1982 – 9 January 2015) as the main suspects of being the masked gunmen. The two Muslim French nationals, both from Gennevilliers, were aged 34 and 32 respectively. Their parents were Algerian immigrants to France. The brothers were orphaned at a young age, and Chérif was raised in foster care in Rennes before he joined his brother in Paris.

Chérif, also known as Abu Issen, was part of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" (named after the park where they met and performed military-style training exercises) that helped send would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. He was arrested at age 22 in January 2005 when he and another man were about to leave for Bashar al-Assad's Syria – at the time a gateway for jihadists wishing to fight U.S. troops in Iraq. Following Chérif's imprisonment between January 2005 and October 2006, he came into contact with Djamel Beghal, who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison in France in 2001 for his part in a plot to bomb the United States embassy in Paris.

Chérif became a student of Farid Benyettou, a radical Muslim preacher at the Addawa Mosque in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Kouachi wanted to attack Jewish targets in France, but Benyettou told him that France, unlike Iraq, was not "a land of jihad".

In 2008, Chérif was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for having assisted in sending fighters to militant Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq, and for being part of a group that solicited young French Muslims to fight with Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He said outrage at the torture of inmates of the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib inspired him to help Iraq's insurgency.

French judicial documents said Amedy Coulibaly and Chérif Kouachi knew each another, and traveled with their wives in 2010 to central France to visit Djamel Beghal. In a 2010 police interview, Coulibaly identified Chérif as a friend he had met in prison and said they saw each other frequently. In 2010, the Kouachi brothers were named in connection with a plot to break out from jail another Islamist, Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem. They were not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. Belkacem was one of those responsible for the 1995 Paris Métro and RER bombings that killed eight people.

From 2009 to 2010, Saïd Kouachi visited Yemen on a student visa to study at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language. There, according to a Yemeni reporter who interviewed Saïd, he met and befriended Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 later in 2009. The two shared an apartment for "one or two weeks".

In 2011, Saïd returned to the country for a number of months and trained with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants. According to a senior Yemeni intelligence source, he met al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in the southern province of Shabwa. Chérif Kouachi told BFMTV that he had been funded by a network loyal to Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen. According to U.S. officials, the U.S. provided France with intelligence in 2011 showing the brothers received training in Yemen. French authorities subsequently began monitoring them, but this surveillance of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi came to an end in the spring of 2014.

Alleged Charlie Hebdo attack driver

The police initially identified the 18-year-old brother-in-law of Cherif Kouachi, an unemployed French Muslim of North-African descent and unknown nationality, as a third suspect in the shooting, accused of driving the getaway car. At the time, he was believed to have been living recently in Charleville-Mézières, about 200 km northeast of Paris near the border with Belgium. He turned himself in at a Charleville-Mézières police station early in the morning on 8 January. The man said he was in class at the time of the shooting. Many of his classmates said that he was present at school in Charleville-Mézières during the attack. Police had said at the time that he was not being charged at that time.

He was held for over fifty hours before being released without charges brought against him. His only connection to the shooters was as a relative through marriage.

After the attack

Manhunt

A massive manhunt began immediately after the attack. One suspect left his ID card in an abandoned getaway car. Police officers searched apartments in the Parisian region, in Strasbourg and in Reims.

At 10:30 CET on 8 January, the day following the attack, the two primary suspects were spotted in Aisne, north-east of Paris. Armed security forces, including the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) and the Force d'intervention de la police nationale (FIPN), were deployed to the department to search for the suspects.

Later that day, the police search concentrated on the Picardy region, particularly the area around Villers-Cotterêts and the village of Longpont, after the suspects robbed a petrol station near Villers-Cotterêts, then reportedly abandoned their car before hiding in a forest near Longpont. Searches continued into the surrounding Forêt de Retz (130 km²), one of the largest forests of France.

The manhunt continued with the discovery of the two fugitive suspects early in the morning of 9 January. The Kouachis had hijacked a Peugeot near the town of Crépy-en-Valois. They were chased by police cars for approximately 27 kilometres south down the N2 trunk road. At some point they abandoned their vehicle and an exchange of gunfire between pursuing police and the brothers took place near the commune of Dammartin-en-Goële, 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast of Paris. Several blasts went off as well and Saïd Kouachi sustained a minor neck wound. Several others may have been injured as well but no one was killed in the gunfire. The suspects were not apprehended and escaped on foot.

Dammartin-en-Goële hostage crisis

At around 9:30 a.m., the Kouachi brothers fled into the office of Création Tendance Découverte, a signage production company on an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële. Inside the building were owner Michel Catalano and a male employee, 26-year-old graphics designer Lilian Lepère. Catalano sent Lepère to hide in the refectory and remained in his office himself. Not long after, a salesman named Didier went to the printworks on business. Catalano came out with Chérif Kouachi who introduced himself as a police officer. They shook hands and Kouachi told Didier, "Leave. We don't kill civilians anyhow." These words were what caused Didier to guess that Kouachi was a terrorist and he alerted the police.

The Kouachi brothers remained inside and a lengthy standoff began. Michel Catalano re-entered the building and closed the door after Didier had left. The brothers were not aggressive towards Catalano, who stated, "I didn't get the impression they were going to harm me." He made coffee for them and helped bandage the neck wound that Saïd Kouachi had sustained during the earlier gunfire. Catalano was allowed to leave after an hour. He swore three times to the terrorists that he was alone and did not reveal Lepère's presence. The Kouachi brothers were never aware of him being there. Lepère hid inside a cardboard box and sent the police text messages for around three hours during the siege, providing them with "tactical elements such as [the brothers'] location inside the premises".

Given the proximity (10 km) of the siege to Charles de Gaulle Airport, two of the airport's runways were closed. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called for a police operation to neutralise the perpetrators. However, an Interior Ministry spokesman announced that the Ministry wished first to "establish a dialogue" with the suspects. Officials tried to establish contact with the suspects to negotiate the safe evacuation of a school 500 m from the siege. The Kouachi brothers did not respond to attempts at communication by the French authorities.

The siege lasted for eight to nine hours, and at around 4:30 p.m. there were at least three explosions near the building. At around 5:00 p.m., a police team landed on the roof of the building and a helicopter landed nearby. Before police could reach them, the pair ran out of the building and opened fire on police. The brothers had stated a desire to die as martyrs and the siege came to an end when both Kouachi brothers were gunned down. Lilian Lepère was rescued unharmed. A cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails and an RPG launcher, was found in the area.

Related events on 8–9 January

Related events
Montrouge shooting Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis Charlie Hebdo shooting Locations of attacks in Paris.
Location	Montrouge shooting: Corner of Avenue Pierre Brossolette and Avenue de la Paix in Montrouge, France Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis: Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, Paris, France
Date	8 January 2015 (2015-01-08)–9 January 2015 (2015-01-09) 18:35 CET (UTC+01:00)
Target	Montrouge shooting: Municipal Police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis: Jewish supermarket patrons
Weapons	Montrouge shooting: Gun Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis: Two AK-47 assault rifles
Deaths	6 total: 1 police officer at Montrouge shooting 4 hostages and 1 gunman at Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis
Injured	10 total: 1 bystander at Montrouge shooting 6 hostages and 3 police officers at Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis
Perpetrators	Amedy Coulibaly

Montrouge shooting

On 8 January, Amedy Coulibaly shot and killed municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe at the junction of Avenue Pierre Brossolette and Avenue de la Paix in Montrouge, a southern suburb of Paris. A street sweeper was also severely wounded in the attack. Press sources stated that Coulibaly was from the same jihadist group as the gunmen who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack, and the police said there was a connection between the incidents.

Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis

Main article: Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis

On 9 January, Coulibaly, armed with two AK-47 assault rifles, entered and attacked a Hypercacher kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in east Paris. He killed four people, and took several hostages. He had a female accomplice, speculated to be his wife, Hayat Boumeddiene. Coulibaly was reportedly in contact with the Kouachi brothers as the sieges progressed, and told police that he would kill hostages if the brothers were harmed.

Police stormed the grocery store and gunned down Coulibaly. Fifteen hostages were rescued. Several people, including two police officers, were wounded during the incident. Lassana Bathily, a Malian-born shop assistant, has been hailed as a hero in the crisis for hiding people from the gunman in a downstairs refrigerator room and assisting police after his escape.

Aftermath

France

The remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo announced that the next week's edition of the newspaper was to be released as usual. With eight pages it will be half its usual length, and will have a print run of one million copies, compared with its usual 60,000. The "survivors' issue" of Charlie Hebdo will also be sold outside France. The Digital Innovation Press Fund donated €250,000 to support the magazine, matching a donation by the French Press and Pluralism Fund. The Guardian Media Group pledged a separate donation of £100,000 to the same cause.

There were attacks on two mosques and a restaurant nearby, and another on a mosque elsewhere in France, apparently in retaliation for the shootings.

On the night of Thursday 8, 2015, police commissioner Helric Fredo, who had been investigating the attack, committed suicide in his office in Limoges shortly after meeting with the family of one of the victims. He was said to have been experiencing depression and burn-out.

Security

File:Plan Vigipirate - 08 janvier 2015.png

Alert status of France on 8 January 2015.
  – High chance of threat (threat level 3)
  – Definite threat (threat level 4)

Following the attack, France raised its terror alert to its highest level and deployed soldiers in Paris to the public transport system, media offices, places of worship and the Eiffel Tower. The British Foreign Office warned its citizens about travelling to Paris. The New York City Police Department ordered extra security measures to the offices of the Consulate General of France in New York in Manhattan's Upper East Side as well as the Lycée Français de New York, which was deemed a possible target due to the proliferation of attacks in France as well as the level of hatred of the United States within the extremist community. In Denmark, which was the center of a controversy over cartoons of Muhammad in 2005, security was increased at all media outlets.

Hours after the shooting, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz said that Spain's anti-terrorist security level had been upgraded, and that the country was sharing information with France in relation to the attacks. Spain increased security around public places such as railway stations and increased the police presence on streets throughout the country's cities.

The British Transport Police confirmed on 8 January that they would establish new armed patrols in and around St Pancras International railway station in London, following reports that the suspects were moving north towards Eurostar stations. They confirmed that the extra patrols were for the reassurance of the public and to maintain visibility and that there were no credible reports yet of the suspects heading towards St Pancras.

In Belgium, the staff of P-Magazine has been given police protection, although there were no specific threats. P-Magazine had previously published a cartoon of Muhammad drawn by the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Demonstrations

7 January

Further information: Je suis Charlie

The "I am Charlie" slogan became an endorsement of freedom of speech and press.

On the evening of the day of the attack, demonstrations against the shootings were held at the Place de la République in Paris and in other cities including Toulouse, Nice, Lyon, Marseille and Rennes. These gatherings led to 8 January being declared as an official day of mourning by President François Hollande.

Many demonstrators used the slogan "Je suis Charlie" (Error: {{language with name/for}}: missing language tag or language name (help)) to express solidarity with the magazine. It was used as the hashtag #jesuischarlie on Twitter, as printed or hand-made placards, and displayed on mobile phones at vigils, and on many websites, particularly media sites such as Le Monde. Je suis Charlie quickly trended at the top of Twitter hashtags worldwide following the attack. The United States Embassy in Paris changed its Twitter profile picture to the "Je suis Charlie" placard.

Not long after the attack, it is estimated that around 35,000 people gathered in Paris holding "Je suis Charlie" signs. 15,000 people also gathered in Lyon and Rennes. 10,000 people gathered in Nice and Toulouse; 7,000 in Marseille; and 5,000 each in Nantes, Grenoble and Bordeaux. Thousands also gathered in Nantes at the Place Royale. More than 100,000 people in total gathered within France to partake in these demonstrations the evening of 7 January.

• Protests in France
• 
  Demonstrators gather at the Place de la République in Paris on the night of the attack
• 
  Demonstrators in Bordeaux
• 
  Tributes to the victims in Toulouse

Similar demonstrations and candle vigils spread to other cities outside of France as well, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Berlin, Copenhagen, London and Washington, D.C. Around 2,000 demonstrators gathered in London's Trafalgar Square and sang La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. In Brussels, two vigils have been held thus far, one immediately at the city's French consulate and a second one at Place du Luxembourg. Many flags around the city were at half-mast on 8 January. In the evening of 8 January over a 100 demonstrations were held from 18:00 in the Netherlands at the time of the silent march in Paris, after the mayors of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht and later more mayors called to do so. Many Dutch government members joined the demonstrations.

Tribute to Charlie Hebdo in Strasbourg 7 January 2015

Luxembourg 8 January 2015

On the other side of the Atlantic, a crowd gathered on the same evening, 7 January, at Union Square in Manhattan, New York City. French ambassador to the United Nations Francois Delattre was present; the crowd lit candles, held signs, and sang the French national anthem. Several hundred people also showed up outside of the French consulate in San Francisco with "Je suis Charlie" signs to show their solidarity. In downtown Seattle, another vigil was held where people gathered around a French flag laid out with candles lit around it. They prayed for the victims and held "Je suis Charlie" signs. Further south in Argentina, a large demonstration was held to denounce the attacks and show support for the victims outside the French embassy in the capital Buenos Aires.

More vigils and gatherings were held in Canada to show support to France and condemn terrorism. Many cities had notable "Je suis Charlie" gatherings, including Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. In Calgary, there was a strong anti-terrorism sentiment. "We're against terrorism and want to show them that they won't win the battle. It's horrible everything that happened, but they won't win," commented one demonstrator. "It's not only against the French journalists or the French people, it's against freedom – everyone, all over the world, is concerned at what's happening." In Montreal, despite a temperature of −21 °C (−6 °F), over 1,000 people gathered chanting "Liberty!" and "Charlie!" outside of the city's French Consulate. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre was among the gatherers and proclaimed, "Today, we are all French!" He confirmed the city's full support for the people of France and called for strong support regarding freedom, stating that "We have a duty to protect our freedom of expression. We have the right to say what we have to say."

8 January

By 8 January, the vigils had also spread to Australia. Gatherings had formed in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, with thousands of people holding up "Je suis Charlie" signs. In Sydney, people gathered at Martin Place – the location of a siege less than a month earlier – and in Hyde Park dressed in white clothing as a form of respect; flags were at half-mast at the city's French consulate where bouquets of flowers had been left by mourners. A vigil was held at Federation Square in Melbourne with an emphasis on togetherness. The gathering in Perth was described by French consul Patrick Kedemos as "a spontaneous, grass roots event". He added, "We are far away but our hearts today [are] with our families and friends in France. It [was] an attack on the liberty of expression, journalists that were prominent in France, and at the same time it's an attack, or a perceived attack on our culture."

• Protests around the world
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  Brisbane, Australia
• Berlin, Germany
  Berlin, Germany
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  Bologna, Italy
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  French Embassy, Moscow, Russia
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  Brussels, Belgium

10–11 January

Main article: Republican marches

Around 700,000 people walked in protest in France on 10 January, with major marches being held in Toulouse (attended by 100,000), Marseille (45,000), Lille (35–40,000), Nice (23–30,000), Pau (80,000), Nantes (75,000), Orléans (22,000), and Caen (6,000).

On 11 January 2015, up to 2 million people including President Hollande and more than 40 world leaders led a "unity rally", organised to show unity after the attacks, streaming into the heart of Paris for a rally of national unity to honour the 17 victims. The demonstrators marched from Place de la République to Place de la Nation, with more than one million people joining in. In all, 3.7 million people joined demonstrations nationwide, in what officials called the largest public rally in France since World War II. There were also large marches in many other French towns and cities — perhaps three million people throughout France — along with marches and vigils in many other cities worldwide.

• Republican marches on 11 January in France
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  fr, Paris.
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  Chambéry.
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  Rennes.

Reactions

French government

President François Hollande addressed media outlets at the scene of the shooting and called it "undoubtedly a terrorist attack", adding that "several [other] terrorist attacks were thwarted in recent weeks". He later described the shooting as a "terrorist attack of the most extreme barbarity", called the slain journalists "heroes", and declared a day of national mourning on 8 January.

At a rally in the Place de la République in the wake of the shooting, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo said, "What we saw today was an attack on the values of our republic, Paris is a peaceful place. These cartoonists, writers and artists used their pens with a lot of humour to address sometimes awkward subjects and as such performed an essential function." She proposed that Charlie Hebdo "be adopted as a citizen of honour" by Paris.

Other countries

Main article: International reactions to the Charlie Hebdo shooting

The attack received immediate and swift condemnation from dozens of governments worldwide. Statements of condolence and outrage were offered by many international leaders including Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Stephen Harper, Angela Merkel, Matteo Renzi, David Cameron and Tony Abbott.

Media

Some English-language media outlets republished the controversial cartoons on their websites in the hours following the shootings. Prominent examples included Bloomberg News, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Gawker, Vox and The Washington Free Beacon. Other news organizations covered the shootings without showing the controversial drawings, such as The New York Times, New York Daily News, CNN, Al-Jazeera America, Associated Press and The Daily Telegraph. Two websites accused the latter group of self-censorship. The BBC, which previously had guidelines against all depictions of Muhammad, showed a depiction of him on a Charlie Hebdo cover and announced that they were reviewing these guidelines.

Other media publications such as Germany's Berliner Kurier and Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza reprinted cartoons from Charlie Hebdo the day after the attack. At least three Danish newspapers featured Charlie Hebdo cartoons, and the tabloid B.T. used one on the cover, depicting Muhammad lamenting being loved by "idiots". The German newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost re-published cartoons, and their office was fire-bombed. In Russia, LifeNews and Komsomolskaya Pravda suggested that the United States had carried out the attack. "We are Charlie Hebdo" appeared on the front page of Novaya Gazeta.

In Australia, what was considered the iconic national cartoonist's reaction was a cartoon by David Pope in the Canberra Times newspaper, who on 8 January 2015 had published a cartoon depicting a masked, black-clad figure with a smoking rifle standing poised over a slumped figure of a cartoonist in a pool of blood, with a speech balloon showing the gunman saying "He drew first".

Media organizations carried out protests against the shootings. Libération, Le Monde, and Le Figaro, along with other French media outlets, used black banners carrying the slogan "Je suis Charlie" across the top of their websites. The front page of Libération's printed version was a different black banner, stating, "Nous sommes tous Charlie" (We are all Charlie), while Paris Normandie renamed itself Charlie Normandie for the day. The French, and later the UK, versions of Google displayed a black ribbon of mourning on the day of the attack.

Ian Hislop, editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, released a statement, saying, "I am appalled and shocked by this horrific attack – a murderous attack on free speech in the heart of Europe. ... Very little seems funny today." Many cartoonists from around the world responded to the attack on Charlie Hebdo by posting cartoons relating to the shooting. Among them was Albert Uderzo, the creator of Astérix, who came out of retirement at the age of 87 to depict his title character supporting Charlie Hebdo.

Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm featured drawings by young cartoonists signed with "Je suis Charlie" in solidarity with the victims. Al-Masry al-Youm also displayed on their website a slide show of some Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including controversial ones. This was seen by analyst Jonathan Guyer as a "surprising" and maybe "unprecedented" move, due to the pressure Arab artists can be subject to when depicting religious figures in the region.

The Guardian reported that "[o]ther Muslims said they would only condemn the Paris attack if France condemned the killings of Muslims worldwide." Zvi Bar'el argued in Haaretz that believing the attackers represented Muslims was like believing that Ratko Mladić represented Christians. Al Jazeera English editor and executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr attacked Charlie Hebdo as the work of solipsists, and sent out a staff-wide email where he argued: "Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile." The e-mail elicited different responses from within the organization.

Reporters Without Borders criticized the presence of leaders from Egypt, Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, saying "On what grounds are representatives of regimes that are predators of press freedom coming to Paris to pay tribute to Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always defended the most radical concept of freedom of expression?"

Muslim reactions

Supporting the attack

Anjem Choudary, a British Islamist, wrote an editorial in USA Today in which he professes justification from the words of Muhammad that those who insult prophets should face death, and that Muhammad should be protected to prevent further violence. Saudi-Australian Islamic preacher Junaid Thorne said: "If you want to enjoy 'freedom of speech' with no limits, expect others to exercise 'freedom of action'."

Bahujan Samaj Party leader Yaqub Qureishi, a Muslim MLA and former Minister from Uttar Pradesh in India, offered a reward of ₹510 million (US$8 million) to the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shootings. Qureshi was in headlines in 2006 after declaring a reward of the same value to anyone who would kill the Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, who had created a controversial cartoon of the Muhammad.

The attack was also praised by ISIS. ISIS militant Abu Mussab from Syria praised the massacre. Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist organization in Somalia, also praised the attackers.

Two Islamist newspapers in Turkey ran headlines that drew ire on social media for justifying the attack: the Yeni Akit ran an article entitled "Attack on the magazine that provoked Muslims", and Türkiye ran an article entitled "Attack on the magazine that insulted our Prophet".

"Shots of joy in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh, in southern Lebanon, were heard Wednesday in celebration of the attack against the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, reported the LBCI chain. The information has also been reported by al-Jadeed television," reported the L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper of Beirut, Lebanon.

"Afghanistan rally hails Charlie Hebdo attackers as 'heroes'. Hundreds in southern Afghanistan rallied to praise the killing of 12 people at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, calling the two gunmen "heroes" who meted out punishment for cartoons disrespectful to Islam's prophet, officials said Saturday. The demonstrators also protested President Ashraf Ghani's swift condemnation of the bloody attack on the satirical newspaper," reported Yahoo Canada, on a Reuters wire.

Condemning the attack

Tributes to the victims in Istanbul, Turkey

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, and Qatar denounced the incident, as did Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the leading Sunni institution of the Muslim world. Various Islamic organisations, like the French Council of the Muslim Faith, the Muslim Council of Britain and Islamic Forum of Europe spoke out against the attack, with Sheikh Abdul Qayum and Imam Dalil Boubakeur stating, "[We] are horrified by the brutality and the savagery." The Union of Islamic Organisations of France released a statement condemning the attack, along with Imam Hassen Chalghoumi saying that those behind the attack "have sold their soul to hell". The vice president of the U.S. Ahmadiyya Muslim Community also condemned the attack, saying, "The culprits behind this atrocity have violated every Islamic tenet of compassion, justice, and peace." According to International Business Times columnist Zoe Mintz, the "Je suis Charlie" slogan was also used by Muslim social media users, with some condemning the attack specifically as an assault on free speech. She also noted that some users were concerned that: "Muslims will be linked to an attack committed by extremists and become the target of discrimination".

The League of Arab States released a collective condemnation of the attack. Al-Azhar University also released a statement denouncing the attack, stating that violence was never appropriate regardless of "offence committed against sacred Muslim sentiments".

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, raised concerns that the attack could fuel further anti-Islamic stances in France and in Europe as a whole, stances which he said help to fuel terrorism itself. The Dutch Council of Moroccan Mosques also raised concerns that the tension could result in anti-Islam violence in the Netherlands.

Both the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Hamas Government of the Gaza Strip condemned the attack and stated that "differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder".

The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, also condemned the terrorists, declaring that "takfiri terrorist groups" had insulted Islam more than "even those who have attacked the Prophet."

Hacktivist group Anonymous released a statement in which they offered condolences to the families of the victims and denounced the attack as an "inhuman assault" on the freedom of expression. They also addressed the terrorists: "[a] message for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists – we are declaring war against you, the terrorists." As such, Anonymous plans to target Jihadist websites and social media accounts linked to supporting Islamic terrorism with the aim of disrupting them and shutting them down.

Student tensions

Le Figaro reported that up to 80% in areas in France where religious tensions were high refused the minute of silence that the French government decreed for schools A student told a teacher, "I'll drop you with a Kalashnikov." Other teachers were told Charlie Hebdo "had it coming" and "Me, I'm for the killers". One teacher requested to be transferred. La Provence reported that a fight broke out in the l'Arc à Orange high school during the minute of silence, as a result of a student post on a social network welcoming the atrocities. The student was later penalised for posting the message.

Le Monde reported cases such as that of Abdul, age 14, who said, with regard to Charbonnier, "I have no pity for him." It also reported that for most students at the Paul Eluard high school in Saint-Denis, freedom of expression is seen as "incompatible with their faith". A fake bomb was planted in the faculty lounge at the school. France Télévisions reported that a fourth-grade student told her teacher, "We will not be insulted by a drawing of the prophet, it is normal that we take revenge." It also reported that the fake bomb contained the message "I Am Not Charlie".

Public figures

Former Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed, criticized the victims for "religious provocation". Former Union Minister and Indian National Congress senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar defended the attacks on Twitter and television as a response to France banning the niqab, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He suffered heavy backlash from the Indian public following his controversial remarks. The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said "we will not allow anyone to insult the prophet, even if it will cost us our lives."

Support for Charlie Hebdo

Salman Rushdie, who is on the Al-Qaeda hit list and received death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses, expressed his support for Charlie Hebdo. He said, "I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity ... religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today."

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, also on the Al-Qaeda hit list for publishing his own satirical drawings of Muhammad, condemned the attacks and said that the terrorists "got what they wanted. They've scared people. People were scared before, but with this attack fear will grow even larger" and that the attack "expose[s] the world we live in today".

Criticism of Charlie Hebdo

Bill Donohue, president of the United States Catholic League, said Charlie Hebdo had a "long and disgusting record" of mocking religious figures and that Charb "didn't understand the role he played in his tragic death. ... Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive."

Cartoonist-journalist Joe Sacco expressed grief for the victims in a comic strip, and wrote "but ... tweaking the noses of Muslims ... has never struck me as anything other than a vapid way to use the pen ... I affirm our right to "take the piss" ... but we can try to think why the world is the way it is ... and [retaliating with violence against Muslims] is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each other's world." Russian Orthodox Christians from the "God's Will" movement called the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists "blasphemers" who "received a just punishment."

Social media

French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve declared that by the morning of 9 January 2015, 3,721 messages "condoning the attacks" had already been documented through the French government Pharos system.

See also

• Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
• Je suis Charlie – a slogan used by protesters and demonstrators to show their support and honour the victims of the shootings.

General:

• Censorship in Islamic societies
• List of Islamic terrorist attacks
• List of terrorist attacks in France

Bibliography

• Zarka, Yves Charles; Taussig, Sylvie; Fleury, Cynthia (2004). "Les contours d'une population susceptible d'être musulmane d'après la filiation". L'Islam en France (in French). Presses universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-053723-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Media related to Charlie Hebdo shooting at Wikimedia Commons