Paris:
The Charlie Hebdo caricaturist who was forced at gunpoint to open the satirical newspaper’s door to two al-Qaida extremists described on Tuesday the moments of sheer terror from the attack in January 2015, and the feelings of guilt and powerlessness she endured long afterward.
Corinne Rey had tears in her eyes but her voice was clear as she testified at the trial of 13 men and one woman accused of helping three men plot January 7-9, 2015, attacks in Paris. Seventeen people, including 12 in and around Charlie Hebdo’s offices, four at a kosher supermarket and a policewoman, were killed. All three attackers were killed in subsequent police raids.
The attack at the newspaper happened during a weekly meeting, and the victims included most of the paper’s editorial staff. Only at the moment when Rey described leading them to the wrong floor of the building did Rey falter, crouching down and holding her arms over her head in a replay of her reaction as the gunmen realized her mistake.
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi targeted Charlie Hedbo because they believed the newspaper blasphemed Islam by publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. They told Rey they were sparing her life because she was a woman. “This is something I will live with the rest of my life. I felt so powerless, felt so guilty,” she said.
Now, she said, “I expect justice to be done here. It is the law of men that rules, and not the law of God, as the terrorists would have it.” The day the trial opened, last week, Charlie Hebdo reprinted the caricatures.
