Tag: Charlie Hebdo

  • Pakistani who attacked French magazine’s office says PM Imran, Khadim Rizvi influenced him

    Pakistani who attacked French magazine’s office says PM Imran, Khadim Rizvi influenced him

    The Pakistani man who attacked the former offices of French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, last September was radicalised by videos of preachers in his home country and anti-France demonstrations at the time, AFP reported, citing a local newspaper.

    According to Le Parisien, police investigation has revealed the 26-year-old had spent the days leading up to his knife attack watching extremist preachers on YouTube and TikTok denouncing France and Charlie Hebdo.

    “I couldn’t eat. I was crying watching the videos,” Zaheer Hassan Mahmood told investigators.

    Weeks before, the magazine had republished sketches of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which were considered blasphemous by Muslims, to mark the start of a trial of men linked to a 2015 attack on its offices.

    Mahmood said he did not realise the magazine had moved offices after the 2015 attack and presumed the two people he slashed with a meat cleaver were employees of the publication, the report said.

    Both victims, who worked for a TV production company with no links to Charlie Hebdo, sustained serious injuries.

    Mahmood, from the village of Kothli Qazi in Punjab province, had entered France with false papers showing him as an unaccompanied minor, enabling him to claim asylum.

    Islamist groups organised demonstrations in Pakistan in September against Charlie Hebdo and French President Emmanuel Macron, who defended freedom of expression and blasphemy, which is legal in France.

    Mahmood watched videos by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the late founder of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, and other radical preachers.

    He was also influenced by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who accused Macron of “attacking Islam”, the newspaper said.

    Blasphemy is a criminal act in Pakistan, where laws allow death penalty for anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or Islamic personalities.

    Mahmood said he initially intended to damage the office building, rather than attack people, and has offered to apologise to his victims.

    Investigators have found a video he sent to a friend the day before his attack which called for the decapitation of blasphemers, and he received a call from Greece the same day which appeared to refer to a pre-meditated assault.

    He has been charged with “attempted murder with relation to a terrorist enterprise”.

  • Pakistan summons French envoy for ‘hurting sentiments’ of Muslims

    Pakistan summons French envoy for ‘hurting sentiments’ of Muslims

    A day after French President Emmanuel Macron criticised Islam, Pakistan summoned French envoy to register a protest for hurting sentiments of Muslims around the world.

    Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi reportedly said that it was time to make a collective decision on the sensitive issue. “Civilised nations should respect Muslim sentiments,” he added.

    The foreign minister also proposed declaring March 15 a “Day of Solidarity” to honour the 2019 Christchurch attack in New Zealand, as he announced to take up the issue on the forum of the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

    Qureshi’s comments follow a statement by the Foreign Office wherein it expressed concerns “at highly disturbing statements by certain politicians justifying such heinous acts under the garb of freedom of expression and equating Islam with terrorism, for narrow electoral and political gains.”

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has also condemned Macron, saying that the French president “attacked Islam” by encouraging the display of the blasphemous caricatures.

    Meanwhile, France has urged Arab countries to stop calls for boycotts of French products, while President Emmanuel Macron vowed the country would never give in to “Islamic radicals”.

    The French Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday that in recent days there had been calls to boycott French products, notably food products, in several Middle Eastern countries as well as calls for demonstrations against France over the publication of satirical cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

  • French president refuses to condemn blasphemous caricatures of Holy Prophet (PBUH)

    French President Emmanuel Macron has defended the decision by Charlie Hebdo magazine to re-publish blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), saying “we have freedom of expression and freedom of belief”.

    But Macron, speaking on a visit to Lebanon on Tuesday, said it was incumbent on French citizens to show civility and respect for each other, and avoid a “dialogue of hate”.

    “It’s never the place of a president to pass judgment on the editorial choice of a journalist or newsroom, never. Because we have freedom of the press,” Macron said.

    The infamous French magazine is republishing the offensive caricatures, which unleashed a wave of anger in the Muslim world, to mark the start of the trial of alleged accomplices in the militant attack against it in 2015.

    Most cartoons were first published by a Danish newspaper in 2005 and then by Charlie Hebdo a year later.

    “We will never lie down. We will never give up,” Editor Laurent Sourisseau wrote in a piece to accompany the front cover that will be published in print on Wednesday.

    Twelve people, including some of the magazine’s cartoonists, were killed when Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and sprayed the building with automatic gunfire.

    The Kouachi brothers and a third gunman who killed five people in the 48 hours that followed the Charlie Hebdo massacre were shot dead by police in different stand-offs, but 14 of their alleged accomplices go on trial on Wednesday.

    The decision to republish the offensive cartoons will be seen by some as a defiant gesture in defence of free expression.

    But others may see it as a renewed provocation by a magazine that has long courted controversy with its satirical attacks on religion.

    After the 2006 publication of the cartoons, people online warned the weekly would pay for its mockery. For Muslims, any depiction of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) is blasphemous.