‘We will never forget you’: Macron’s tribute to the victims of the January 2015 attacks

Emmanuel Macron on Saturday paid tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo, Montrouge and Hyper Cacher attacks eight years ago, tweeting the names of 17 victims and promising to “never” forget them.

Kabu, Wolinsky, Charb, Tygnus, Honoré, Bernard Maris, Elsa Kayat, Frédéric Boisseau, Franck Brinsolaro, Ahmed Merabeth, Mustafa Hurrad, Michel Renaud, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, Philippe Braham, Johan Cohen, Yoav Khattab, François-Michel Saada We will never forget you,” the president wrote.

Also on Twitter, Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne also paid tribute to the victims. “Faced with Islamist terrorism, the Republic persevered. For their families, for our values, for our freedom: let’s not forget,” she wrote.

Ceremony in front of Charlie Hebdo

The ceremony took place, inter alia, in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, in the presence, among others, of the President of the National Assembly, Yael Brown-Pivé, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

It was in these premises that on January 7, 2015, the brothers Said and Sheriff Kouachi killed 11 people. Among the victims are the iconic figures of “Charlie”, such as its director and designer Charb, cartoonists Kabu, Wolinski, Honore, Tignus. and economist Bernard Maris.

A few meters later, on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, police lieutenant Ahmed Merabet was killed by the Kouachi brothers when they tried to stop their flight.

“Avenge the Prophet” Muhammad

The two Islamists claimed they were from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and had come to “avenge the Prophet” Mohammed, who had been caricatured in a satirical newspaper. They were killed after two days of running.

On January 8, another jihadist, Amédi Coulibaly, killed a policewoman in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine). The next day, this radical perpetrator, who claims to be from ISIS, killed four hostages, all Jews, in a kosher supermarket in east Paris. He was shot down during the assault.

Eight years later, Charlie Hebdo found itself at the center of a diplomatic crisis this week after publishing cartoons of the Iranian regime that Tehran found offensive. Iran announced on Thursday the closure of the oldest and most important French research center in the country, the French Institute for Research in Iran (IFRI), which is affiliated with the French Foreign Ministry.