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Charlie Hebdo attack



Charlie Hebdo attack: mourners in France fear political backlash









Far-right Front National party and its leader Marine Le Pen have been most vocal in wake of attacks saying France is now at war














A woman holds up a symbolic pen as she joins others gathered for a minute's silence in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Photograph: Ian Langsdon/EPA




Angelique Chrisafis in Paris


Thursday 8 January 2015 14.58 EST







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As the grim tolling of the bells of Notre Dame cathedral ended the minute’s silence on a tense day of national mourning, Sabrina Deliry, a 34-year-old Parisian bank worker, stood among hundreds gathered in the rain to defend “freedom”.
Having taken the day off work to join the crowd, many silently weeping and holding newspapers, pens or bunches of flowers, she felt numb and afraid.
It wasn’t just the confusion of gunmen still on the run 24 hours after the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine, the biggest terrorist attack on France for decades. Nor was it only the deaths of 12 people, including five cartoonists so well known they felt like family, or the dread of subsequent mosque attacks and another unexplained shooting in southern Paris. She felt nervous about what would come next for France and for French society.
“I’m afraid there will be a real sense of: ‘If you love France, stay; if you don’t love France, then go home,’” she said. “This is a country with already so much to worry about in terms of economic difficulty and a society on edge. I don’t want politicians to capitalise on this. I will feel very let down if the Front National cash in on it.”
But across Paris, political rows were already brewing in the wake of what Le Monde’s front page called “The French September 11”. Following the gun attack on France’s best known satirical magazine, parties and activists from across the political spectrum were preparing for a national march to defend freedom of expression and express the horror and grief that have ripped through the nation.
But tension is growing over whether the far-right Front National and its leader Marine Le Pen should be allowed to take part. Some on the left and in other mainstream parties feel the history of the far-right FN and its divisive discourse on immigration, Islam and minorities mean far-right politicians should not walk with them. Le Pen is not going to take this lying down, and the political spat in Paris has laid bare society’s fault-lines.
Le Pen – whose party’s strong electoral gains have seen her win the European elections and have placed her so high in the polls that she is considered a serious contender in the first round of the presidential election vote of 2017 – has been the most vocal of French politicians in the wake of the attack.
In a video on her website, and then in a television interview, she has said France must defend itself against “the war” that has been declared against it. The party, whose anti-immigration, anti-foreigner, focus on Islam has inspired other parties, notably that of Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP, to compete on the same ground, has been walking a delicate line.
Le Pen has warned against confusing the events with France’s wider Muslim community, while adding: “France must now go to war against fundamentalist Islam. Because they are at war against France.”
Reiterating her wish for the return of the death penalty in France, she has accused the ruling political class of being bound by political correctness. “The time of denial, of hypocrisy, is no longer possible,” she said.
Others in her entourage have said the terrorist attack shows the Front National has been right all along with its line on immigration and fundamentalism. FN members say there will “clearly be political consequences” after the attack. Wallerand de Saint-Just, a senior party figure, told French journalists, “It’s a little too early to know, but it’s true that it could have an impact on elections because we’ve always had a discourse that was extremely firm on the dangers of radical Islam in France.” Nicolas Bay, an FN MEP said to exclude the Front National from Sunday’s march was to exclude the only people “who are not responsible for the current chaos.”
The attack has sparked national soul-searching on the importance not only of freedom of expression but on the holding-together of society. Pierette Azema, 66, a lollypop lady outside a nursery school in central Paris, said: “You have to understand the history of this country. I worry this attack was an attack on tolerance. My grandmother hid Jewish people in her cellar during the round-ups of the Nazi occupation. We have to stand together.”
She added that the death of cartoonists was woefully symbolic in a country where children are raised on comics, graphic art dominates newspapers and cartooning is a key part of politics. The satirists killed had a special place in French society as people who could say the unsayable, pushing all boundaries, from May 1968 on.
“They were like our family, part of our universe. I had lived with those cartoonists and their drawings since I was a child. It’s something that’s part of France. From the pamphlets in the street under Louis XIV, this is the way France expresses itself,” Azema said.
Outside Notre Dame, Claude Bouris, 67, a retired stage-manager who had spent the previous night at a silent vigil for those killed, said: “This attack strikes at the very heart of all France stands for: freedom and freedom of speech.”
France was also poring over the tragic details of the dead – a snapshot of French society, from the celebrated satirists to the Muslim police officer and a long-serving sub-editor, an orphan from a Kabyle village in Algeria who had arrived in France after friends paid his way when he was 20. He had just got French nationality.
But many agreed a new wave of soul-searching would begin once the gunmen were caught and their own stories examined. In the past five years, hundreds have been arrested on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in France. The country had been horrified by the gun attacks of Mohamed Merah in Toulouse in 2012, targeting among others a Jewish school.
In the crowds of those defending French freedoms at the vigils, people wondered how the men behind the latest attacks, seemingly two French-born brothers who were apparently already known to police and one of whom became radicalised in prison, would fit into the narrative of modern France.



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Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video

File footage of one of the Paris gunmen, Cherif Kouachi, arriving at court in 2008 on charges of helping to funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency



Published: 13 Jan 2015




Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video












Analysis Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris

The radicalisation of the Kouachi brothers began in a picturesque park in the capital while Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris












Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras

Officials try to pinpoint when and where cameras found in possession of Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly were obtained



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras












Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices

Mobilisation of 10,000 troops to guard potentially vulnerable locations comes as prime minister warns that ‘threat still present’



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices














Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly




Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly








Analysis Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based








Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis








Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends

Olivier Tonneau




Published: 13 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends
















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