Man jailed for knife attack aimed at French magazine Charlie Hebdo
A Paris court on Thursday 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 Islamists a decade ago for publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed.
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.
Radicalised
Originally from rural Pakistan, Mahmood arrived in France illegally in the summer of 2019.
The court had earlier heard how Mahmood was influenced by radical Pakistani preacher Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who had called for the beheading of blasphemers.
Mahmood was convicted of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy and he will be banned from France when his sentence is served.
The 2015 bloodshed, which included a separate but linked hostage-taking that claimed another four lives at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris, marked the start of a dark period for France.
In the years that followed extremists inspired by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group repeatedly mounted attacks, setting the country on edge and inflaming religious tensions.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.
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