“I saw the perpetrators coming out of the building backwards”

“We have avenged the Prophet,” the perpetrators shouted on that Wednesday morning in January 2015 as they left the building that housed the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” after just two minutes.

They fled and were shot dead by police two days later in a printing plant around 40 kilometers northeast of Paris. It was later possible to reconstruct how the two had become radicalized.

They murdered twelve people, including eight members of the editorial team, including their editor Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, the illustrators Cabu (Jean Cabut), Tignous (Bernard Verlac) and Georges Wolinski, who were considered important figures in the satirical press in France.

“Je suis Charlie” went around the world as an expression of solidarity

Also killed were, among others, Charb’s bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro and police officer Ahmed Merabet. When the magazine’s webmaster at the time, Simon Fieschi, who was seriously injured, took his own life in October 2024, it was like a terrible echo of the attack for many.

This was seen as the grisly start of a whole series of attacks that followed in France and Europe. On January 8, 2015, Amedy Coulibaly killed police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Montrouge, south of Paris.

The following day, he murdered four people during a hostage situation in the Paris kosher supermarket Hyper Casher before police shot him dead.

Coulibaly claimed responsibility for the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS). Ten months later, a total of 130 people died in attacks on Parisian bars, the Bataclan concert hall and the Stade de France football stadium.

France remembers 2015 as the year in which it was hit harder than ever by terrorism. Many stood up against it: on January 11th, 3.7 million people took part in funeral marches across the country, including around 50 heads of state and government.

The catchphrase “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) went around the world as an expression of solidarity. Just a week after the attack, a “Survivors’ Edition” was published. “All is forgiven!” read the front page alongside a weeping prophet – a fearless message to those who wanted to wipe out the magazine.

The cartoon was drawn by Rénald Luzier, known as Luz, whose life, as he says, was saved. To celebrate his 43rd birthday, he and his girlfriend spent the morning of January 7, 2015 in bed.

When he arrived at “Charlie Hebdo” very late, he saw the murderers: “I saw them walking backwards out of the building, with dancing steps, as if in a kind of choreography.” A few months later he left Paris and the magazine for that he had worked for 23 years.

“The most difficult thing for me was letting the whole world take over my grief,” Luz said in an interview with the Tagesspiegel. Within a week he buried nine people close to him, and at the same time was supposed to draw caricatures and give interviews.

“Some made me a symbol that I never wanted to be,” said the 52-year-old. To deal with the grief, he wrote books: “Katharsis,” which was published in September 2015, was about “that absolute bewilderment after the death of a loved one,” he said. In “We Were Charlie” he told anecdotes: “I wanted to show everyone who said ‘I’m Charlie’ who Charlie actually was.”

The magazine continues to be published every week, under the aegis of editor-in-chief Riss (Laurent Sourisseau), who survived the attack injured. It hardly published any Muhammad cartoons anymore. It remained controversial.