A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in prison for trying to kill two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020.
When he carried out the attack, 29-year-old Zaheer Mehmood mistakenly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which had been targeted a decade earlier for publishing derogatory caricatures of Islam.
In fact, Charlie Hebdo was moved in the wake of the storming of its offices by two masked gunmen linked to al-Qaeda, who killed 12 people, including eight of the paper’s editorial staff.
The killings in January 2015 shocked France and triggered an intense debate about freedom of expression and religion, prompting an outpouring of sympathy in France expressed as “Gesus Charlie” (“I’m Charlie”). am”) happened in a wave of solidarity.
Originally from the village of Kotli Qazi in Punjab, Mahmood arrived in France illegally in the summer of 2019.
The court had earlier heard how Mehmood was influenced by Khadeem Hussain Rizvi, the founder of Marda Tehreek-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), who had called for him. Penalty of blasphemy.
Mahmoud was convicted of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit terrorism and will be banned from France when he is sentenced.
The 2015 bloodbath, in which a separate but related hostage-taking at a supermarket in eastern Paris killed four more people , which marked the beginning of a dark age for France.
Extremists inspired by al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have mounted repeated attacks in the years since, putting the country on edge and fueling religious tensions.
revenge
On the eve of the trial in the 2015 massacre, Charlie Hebdo Republished anti-Islamic cartoon on September 2, 2020.
Later that month, urged by Rizvi to retaliate for the insulting cartoons, Mahmood reached out to Charlie Hebdo’s former editor.
Armed with a butcher’s cleaver, he seriously injured two of his employees Premieres lignes News agency.
Throughout the trial, his defense argued that his actions were the result of a deep disconnect he felt from France, given his upbringing in rural Muslim Pakistan.
“In his head, he had never left Pakistan.
“He doesn’t speak French, he lives with Pakistanis, he works for Pakistanis,” Garden added.
‘Something broke inside me’
Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish the cartoons in 2020 triggered a wave of angry protests in Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death.
Five other Pakistani men, some of whom were minors at the time, were on trial alongside Mahmood on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism and aiding and abetting his actions.
The French capital’s special court for juveniles sentenced Mahmoud’s co-defendants to between three and 12 years.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present at the sentencing but did not want to comment on the outcome of the trial.
Earlier in the trial, one of the two, nicknamed Polis, told the court of his long recovery after his near-death experience.
“It broke something in me,” the 37-year-old said.
Neither he nor the other victim, named only as 32-year-old Helen, have accepted Mahmood’s pleas for forgiveness.
Mahmood’s lawyers have not yet indicated whether their client will appeal the verdict.
