PARIS (FRANCE) – French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is all set to republish caricatures of Prophet Mohammad to mark the beginning of the trial of alleged accomplices in the militant attack on its office in 2015. The publication of the caricatures triggered a wave of protests in the Muslim world.
Most of the cartoons were first published by a Danish daily in 2005 and later by the French magazine a year later. One them depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
“We will never lie down. We will never give up,” editor Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau wrote in a piece in the publication which will hit the stands on Wednesday.
When Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the Paris office of the magazine and sprayed bullets in retaliation for publishing the caricatures, 12 people, including the best-known cartoonists, were killed.
The Kouachi siblings and another Islamist terrorist, who killed five people in the 48 hours that followed the Charlie Hebdo bloodbath, were shot dead by police. But 14 of their alleged accomplices go on trial on Wednesday.
While some view the decision to republish the cartoons as a defiant gesture of free expression, others see it as yet another provocative gesture by the publication which has always courted controversy with its satirical attacks on religion.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.