A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in prison for a knife attack outside in 2020 Charlie Hebdo’s East Office.
The court found 29-year-old Zaheer Mahmood guilty of attempt to murder and terrorism in an Islamism-inspired attack in September 2020 that injured two people.
Mahmoud believed he was attacking staff charlie hebdo In Paris, he did not realize that the satirical magazine had been moved after Islamists shot dead 12 of the magazine’s employees in January 2015.
Charlie attacked after republishing cartoons of Prophet Mohammed
The knife attack comes five years after an attack linked to al-Qaeda Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office in January 2015, in which twelve people were killed, including several of France’s most famous cartoonists.
The Islamist attack was in response to the magazine publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
The 2015 attack, which sparked global debate about free speech and religious tolerance, forced the magazine to relocate.
charlie hebdo Republished its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on September 2, 2020, to coincide with the beginning of the 2015 genocide trial.
Attacker became radicalized in France after leaving Pakistan
In a 2020 attack, Mahmoud injured two employees of the Premier Lignes news agency with a butcher knife, mistaking them for Charlie Hebdo staff.
According to his lawyer, Mahmood, a Pakistani national who entered France illegally in 2019, was radicalized by an extremist preacher who urged his followers to “avenge the Prophet”.
According to his lawyer, Mahmood’s actions were caused by the isolation he felt in France after leaving Pakistan.
“In his mind he had never left Pakistan,” Mahmood’s defense lawyer Alberic de Guiardon said on Wednesday. “He doesn’t speak French, he lives with Pakistanis, he works for Pakistanis.”
Five other Pakistani men at the time, some minors, also faced trial for aiding Mahmood, and received sentences of 3 to 12 years.
ss/lo (AFP, dpa)