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Paris (AFP)
The man on Friday carried out an attack with a knife, wounding two people in the street near the former headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in an accident that coincides with the trial of the alleged accomplices of the perpetrators of the attack that targeted the satirical newspaper five and a half years ago.
The French Antiterrorist Prosecutor’s Office took over the investigation of the case that commemorated the painful year 2015 in France, during which it witnessed the January attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the bloodiest on November 13.
The two injured work for the “Promier Linnae” agency, but their status “is not in danger”, according to Prime Minister Jean Castex, who inspected the crash site on Nicolas Appér street in eastern Paris, where police personnel were deployed. .
“It is tragic to see images of the attack on (Calle) Nicolas Appér again five and a half years after the attack on Charlie (Hebdo),” wrote Christophe Delaware, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders, on Twitter. And other places “of the world.
Jean Castex affirmed the government’s “commitment” to press freedom and its willingness to fight terrorism by all possible means.
– Main suspect arrested –
The management of the daily Charlie Hebdo, which has moved to a secret headquarters and under close protection since the attack that killed 11 of its editors, expressed its support and solidarity with its former neighbors and those affected by this heinous attack.
“The main suspect has been arrested and is now in police custody,” said Paris prosecutor Remy Hitz, who was immediately on the scene. He gave no further details about his personal file or possible motive, and indicated that a second person had been detained to verify his “relationship with the main author” of the attack.
The French antiterrorist prosecutor said he had opened an investigation into “an assassination attempt linked to a terrorist act” and a “terrorist criminal association”.
His boss, Jean-Francois Ricard, said the suspect was an 18-year-old and early indications were that he was born in Pakistan and was arrested in June for possessing a knife.
He added that another 33-year-old Algerian national was arrested at Place Bastille at a later time for questioning and to determine possible links to the “main author”.
“Two of my colleagues were smoking under the building on the street. I heard screams. I went to the window and saw one of them with blood on him being chased by a man carrying a machete,” said a witness who works for the agency “Promier Linnae”.
This news agency adjacent to the daily Charlie Hebdo witnessed the 2015 attack by the Kouachi brothers on the editorial board of the weekly.
– Closed area –
“Around noon, we went to have a lunch break in a restaurant. When we arrived, the owner of the restaurant was shouting: ‘They left, they left, an attack happened,'” said Hassani Arwan, 23, a hairdresser who works in a room near the scene of the accident. There were also four clients. “
On January 7, 2015, brothers Sherif and Saeed Kouachi killed 11 people in an attack targeting the editorial board of the satirical weekly, before fleeing and killing a police officer.
The next day, Amedi Coulibaly killed a policeman in Montrouge, on the outskirts of Paris, and on January 9, four people, all Jews, were killed when he took hostages at the Iber Cashier on the eastern outskirts of Paris.
The police killed Coulibaly after breaking into the store, and the Kouachi brothers were killed by special forces of the French police at a printing press where they had taken refuge in Damartan-en-Jules, northeast of Paris.
The series of attacks in France since January 2015 has killed 258 people. Five years later, the level of terrorist threat remains “very high”, according to the Interior Ministry.
New threats
The attack comes at a time when the editorial staff of the daily Charlie Hebdo is under new threats since the reissue of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on September 2, coinciding with the start of the trial, which will last until November 10 for the attacks of January 2015.
After a brief suspension of the trial, the session resumed without mentioning the attack by the Paris special criminal court, according to an AFP journalist.
Earlier this week, Charlie Hebdo’s director of human resources, Marika Brett, was escorted from her home with police due to threats deemed serious.
Following these threats, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanan called for “a reevaluation of the threats to Charlie Hebdo journalists and collaborators.”
On Wednesday, 100 media outlets, including newspapers, magazines and television and radio channels, published an open letter calling on the French to mobilize for freedom of expression.
© 2020 AFP
