A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in prison for trying to murder two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020 with a butcher knife.
When he carried out the attack, Zaheer Mahmood, 29, mistakenly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which was attacked a decade ago for publishing blasphemous cartoons of Islam.
In fact, Charlie Hebdo had taken action after the assault on its offices by two armed and masked men linked to Al-Qaeda, who killed 12 people, including eight members of the newspaper’s editorial staff.
The January 2015 murders shocked France and sparked a fierce debate over freedom of expression and religion, fueling an outpouring of sympathy in France expressed in a wave of “Je Suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) solidarity.
Originally from rural Pakistan, Mahmood arrived in France illegally in the summer of 2019.
The court had earlier heard how Mahmood was influenced by late Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) founder Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who had called for beheading of blasphemers.
Mahmood was found guilty of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy and will be deported from France when he serves his sentence.
The 2015 bloodshed, which included a separate but linked hostage situation that claimed four more lives at a supermarket in eastern Paris, marked the beginning of a dark period for France.
In the years that followed, extremists inspired by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group repeatedly carried out attacks, putting the country on edge and stoking religious tensions.
Revenge
To mark the opening of the trial for the 2015 massacre, Charlie Hebdo republished anti-Islam cartoons on September 2, 2020.
Later that month, urged by Rizvi to seek revenge for the blasphemous cartoons, Mahmood arrived in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former management.
Armed with a butcher knife, he seriously injured two employees of the Lines Premieres news agency.
Throughout the trial, his defense argued that his actions were the result of a deep disconnection he felt from France, given his upbringing in the fervently Muslim countryside of Pakistan.
“In his mind, he had never left Pakistan,” Mahmood’s defense lawyer, Alberic de Gayardon, said on Wednesday, admitting that “every one of his blows was intended to kill.”
“He doesn’t speak French, he lives with Pakistanis, he works for Pakistanis,” Gayardon added.
‘It broke something inside me’
Charlie Hebdo’s decision in 2020 to republish the cartoons sparked a wave of angry protests in Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death.
Five other Pakistani men, some of whom were minors at the time, were tried alongside Mahmood on terrorist conspiracy charges for having supported and encouraged his actions.
The French capital’s special juvenile court handed Mahmood’s co-defendants sentences of between three and 12 years.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present at the sentencing but did not want to comment on the outcome of the trial.
At the beginning of the trial, one of the two, alias Paul, told the court of the long rehabilitation he undertook after his near-death experience.
“Something broke inside me,” the 37-year-old said.
Neither he nor the other victim, identified only as Helene, 32, have accepted Mahmood’s pleas for forgiveness.
Mahmood’s lawyers have yet to indicate whether their client will appeal the verdict.
