A Paris court sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in jail for attempting to murder two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020 with a meat cleaver.
When he carried out the attack, 29-year-old Zaheer Mahmood wrongly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which was targeted by people a decade ago for publishing blasphemous caricatures.
In fact, Charlie Hebdo had moved in the wake of the storming of its offices by two Al-Qaeda-linked masked gunmen, who killed 12 people including eight of the paper’s editorial staff.
The killings in January 2015 shocked France and triggered a fierce debate about freedom of expression and religion, fuelling 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.
Mahmood was convicted of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy and he will be banned from France when his sentence is served.
Mahmood arrived in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former address. Armed with a butcher’s cleaver, he gravely wounded two employees of the Premieres Lignes news agency.
Throughout the trial, his defence argued that his actions were the result of a profound disconnect he felt from France, given his upbringing in the Pakistan countryside.
Charlie Hebdo’s decision in 2020 to republish the controversial caricature triggered a wave of angry demonstrations in Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death.
Five other Pakistani men, some of whom were minors at the time, were on trial alongside Mahmood on terrorist conspiracy charges for having supported and encouraged his actions.
The French capital’s special court for minors handed Mahmood’s co-defendants sentences of between three and 12 years.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.