At least four people have been stabbed near Charlie Hebdo’s former office in Paris on Friday, the site where an Islamic terrorist attack in 2015 left 12 people dead after the newspaper published images of the Prophet Mohammed.
“Al Qaeda, the terrorist group, had recently issued new threats against Charlie Hebdo, which moved after the attack to highly secured offices elsewhere,” The New York Times reported. “The threats followed the newspaper’s decision to reprint satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad at the opening of the trial of several people accused of aiding the assailants.”
Jean Castex, the French prime minister, said that the attack was a “serious event,” adding, “An attack with a bladed weapon was carried out in the 11th arrondissement in front of the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.”
The BBC reported earlier this week:
Charlie Hebdo magazine’s head of HR has left her home because of “precise and detailed threats” to her security guards, French media report.
Marika Bret said her guards, who have protected her for almost five years, received the threats on 14 September.
She blamed “an unreal level of hatred around Charlie Hebdo”.
The magazine was the target of a deadly terror attack in January 2015, in which 12 people were killed, after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
France 24 reported that a suspect from the apparent attack has been detained near the Place de la Bastille in eastern Paris. Two of the victims are in critical condition following the attack.
The trial for the 2015 terrorist attack began earlier this month and was expected to last “at least the next two months.”
“The killings were followed by a string of deadly jihadist attacks, culminating with assaults in November that year in and around Paris that killed 130 people, vaulting France into a yearslong state of emergency,” The New York Times noted in a separate report. “Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the two brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack, died in a shootout with the police north of Paris two days later. A third attacker, Amédy Coulibaly, killed a police officer in a Parisian suburb and four Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket before dying himself when the police stormed the building.”
“With all the central assailants dead, the current trial will be more cathartic than revelatory for a country forced by the events to reckon with the threat of homegrown terrorism, permanently altering its balance between security and civil liberty,” the report continued. “Those on trial, who range in age from 29 to 68, are charged with providing logistical aid to the assailants by carrying or supplying cash, weapons and vehicles. Most of the accused are facing up to 20 years in prison.”
The terrorists killed the newspaper’s top editor, famous cartoonists, and police officers during the rampage.
This story has been updated to include additional updates from today’s attack and additional background information from the 2015 terrorist attack.