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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 of the Prophet Mohammed.
The newspaper had in fact 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 2015 shocked France and triggered a fierce debate about freedom of expression and religion.
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 to “avenge the Prophet”.
Mahmood was convicted of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy, and handed a ban from ever setting foot on French soil again.
On September 25, 2020, at around 11:40 am (1040 GMT), Mahmood arrived in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former address.
Armed with a butcher’s cleaver, he then went on to gravely wound two employees of the Premieres Lignes news agency.
Five other Pakistani men, some of whom were minors at the time, were on trial alongside Mahmood on terrorist conspiracy charges for having supported and encouraged his actions.
The French capital’s special assizes court for minors handed Mahmood’s co-defendants sentences of between three and 12 years, as well as a ban from French soil for those who were adults.
All were registered on the French terror offenders’ list.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present at the sentencing, but did not wish to comment on the trial’s outcome.
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