Charlie Hebdo has decided to republish cartoons of prophet Mohammed that had caused Islamic Terrorists to launch a terror attack against them in 2015 as trial against the perpetrators gets underway. “We will never lie down. We will never give up,” its director Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau said in an editorial to be published along with the cartoons in the latest edition.
“We have often been asked since January 2015 to print other caricatures of Muhammad,” the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo wrote. “We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited — the law allows us to do so — but because there was a need for a good reason to do it, a reason which has meaning and which brings something to the debate.”
The terror attack led to the deaths of twelve people and in subsequent days, a policewoman and four Jews were murdered. The trial will involve the allegations against the accomplices, accused of supplying the weapons and putting the terrorists in touch with ISIS apart from various other crimes. Some of France’s most renowned cartoonists were killed in the terror attack.
The cover to its latest edition shows cartoons first published by Charlie Hebdo in 2006. ‘All of this, just for that,’ says the headline on the first page. Editor-in-chief Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier and cartoonists Jean Cabut, Bernard Verlhac, Georges Wolinski and Philippe Honore were murdered in the terror attack at its offices. Economist Bernard Maris, columnist Elsa Cayat, Charb’s bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro, visitor Michel Renaud and proof-reader Mustapha Ourrad also lost their lives.
The terror attack led to widespread condemnation of the attack and #JeSuisCharlie trended across social media platforms. However, a section of liberals and left-wing media and intellectuals attempted to whitewash the heinous terror attack on Charlie Hebdo, claiming that the cartoons were too offensive.
