French President Francois Hollande unveiled yesterday plaques in memory of the victims of the jihadist rampage a year ago in Paris that began with an assault on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and lasted three days, claiming 17 lives.
Hollande, flanked by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, inaugurated the first plaque at Charlie Hebdo’s former offices, where cartoonists who were household names in France, nicknamed Cabu, Wolinski and Charb, were killed along with nine others.
The January 7-9, 2015, attacks by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, dubbed “France’s 9/11”, marked the start of a string of jihadist strikes in the country that culminated in the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.
The massacre at Charlie Hebdo unleashed an outpouring of solidarity for freedom of expression, with the rallying cry “Je Suis Charlie” taken up around the world.
After the sombre ceremony in a light drizzle, Hollande could be seen embracing Georges Wolinski’s widow Maryse.
Red-faced authorities admitted later that they had misspelled Wolinski’s name on the plaque (spelling it Wolinsky), and rapidly corrected the error.
The president and mayor unveiled a separate plaque nearby at the site where one of the gunmen fleeing the scene shot police officer Ahmed Merabet as he lay on the pavement.
They went on to unveil a third plaque at the Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket in an eastern suburb where four Jews – three shoppers and an employee – were killed during a horrifying hostage drama.
Hollande could be seen greeting Lassana Bathily, the Muslim worker at the supermarket credited with saving many shoppers’ lives by helping them hide in the store’s underground cold room and later aiding police in the logistics of their raid.
Bathily, a Malian who was given French nationality in the wake of the attacks, told AFP: “It’s sad ... in our hearts, we are here, offering support to their (the victims’) families.”
On Saturday, a fourth plaque is to be unveiled at the site in the southern suburb of Montrouge where Amedy Coulibaly, who later attacked the Jewish supermarket, gunned down a policewoman.
Commemorations will culminate in a public event on Sunday in the Place de la Republique, the vast square that has become the rallying point for “Je Suis Charlie” solidarity and for the morning after the November 13 carnage.
An oak “remembrance tree” standing some 10m (35’) tall will be planted in the square.
Veteran rocker Johnny Hallyday will perform Un Dimanche de Janvier (One January Sunday), a song recalling the vast mobilisation that saw 1.6mn people march in Paris on January 11, 2015.
Dozens of world leaders including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the march.
Charlie Hebdo, which had been a target for Islamic militant attack since publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, saw its offices firebombed in 2011.
Ingrid Brinsolaro, the widow of cartoonist Charb’s bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro who was killed alongside him in the attack, has filed a lawsuit claiming that her husband was left vulnerable because the Charlie Hebdo office was inadequately protected.
“To me, Franck was sacrificed, there’s no other word for it. He saw shortcomings, he regretted the lack of security at the offices. He said it was a ‘sieve’ and it was impossible to do his job right in those conditions,” she said on French television yesterday.
Cazeneuve for his part defended the decision to reduce security at the magazine’s offices before the attack, saying that the authorities had determined that jihadists had shifted to targeting soldiers and police.
Charlie Hebdo, whose biting, often vulgar humour has spared no religion or political persuasion, will publish a special commemorative edition today.
True to form, the cover is unabashedly provocative, featuring a Kalashnikov-toting god figure wearing a blood-stained white robe, under the headline: “One year on: The killer is still at large.”