French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of an attack by extremist gunmen in 2015, said Tuesday it was republishing hugely offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) to mark the start of the trial this week of alleged accomplices in the attack.
“We will never lie down. We will never give up,” its director Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau wrote in an editorial to go with the republication of the cartoons in its latest edition.
Twelve people, including some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the paper’s offices in Paris.
The perpetrators were killed in the wake of the massacre but 14 alleged accomplices in the attacks, which also targeted a Jewish supermarket, will go on trial in Paris on Wednesday.
The cover of the latest Charlie Hebdo issue shows a dozen cartoons first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005 — and then reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2006 — which unleashed a storm of anger across the Muslim world.
Source: Agencies
