Charlie Hebdo reprints offensive Prophet caricatures

Five and a half years after terrorists gunned down a dozen people in an attack on the offices of the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper announced Tuesday that it will reprint cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that

Five and a half years after terrorists gunned down a dozen people in an attack on the offices of the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper announced Tuesday that it will reprint cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that apparently sparked the attack.

An editorial to accompany the cartoons, set to come out Wednesday to coincide with the start of a trial related to the attack, said the paper’s staff “will never lie down.”

“We will never give up,” publishing director Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau, who was wounded in the attack, wrote. “The hatred that struck us is still there and, since 2015, it has taken the time to mutate, to change its appearance, to go unnoticed and to quietly continue its ruthless crusade.”

“The only reasons” not to reprint the cartoons, he said, “stem from political or journalistic cowardice.”

The January 2015 attacks against Charlie Hebdo and, two days later, a kosher supermarket, touched off a wave of killings claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) terrorist group across Europe.

Seventeen people died in the attacks – 12 of them at the editorial offices – along with all three attackers.

The attackers, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, claimed their attack on the newspaper in the name of al-Qaeda. As they left the scene at Charlie Hebdo, they killed a wounded policeman and drove away.

The Kouachi brothers had by then holed up in a printing office with another hostage. All three attackers died in near-simultaneous police raids.

The trial that begins on Wednesday involves 14 people who are alleged to have given logistically and material support to the attackers. They face between 10 years and life in prison if convicted.