PARIS:
A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in prison for attempting to murder two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020 with a steak knife.
When he carried out the attack, Zaheer Mahmood, 29, mistakenly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which was attacked by Islamists a decade ago for blasphemous cartoons.
In fact, the newspaper had been moved in the wake of the assault on its offices by two masked gunmen linked to Al Qaeda, who killed 12 people, including eight of the newspaper’s editorial staff.
Originally from rural Pakistan, Mahmood arrived illegally in France in the summer of 2019. The court had previously heard how Mahmood was influenced by radical preacher Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who had called for the beheading of blasphemers to “avenge the prophet (PBUH )”.
Mahmood was convicted of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy, and handed a ban on setting foot on French soil again.
On September 25, 2020, around 11:40 am (1040 GMT), Mahmood arrived in front of the former Charlie Hebdo address.
Armed with a butcher’s carver, he then seriously passed two employees of the Lignes de Premenas 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 Assizes court for minors handed down sentences for Mahmood’s co-defendants of between three and 12 years, as well as a ban from French soil for those who were adults.
They were all registered on the list of French terrorist criminals. None of the six on the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present at the sentencing, but did not wish to comment on the outcome of the trial.
