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L’Humanité, Jan. 7, 2016
“Always Charlie!” reads the Thursday front page of far-left French daily L’Humanité, as France marks the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Paris offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead.
Eight staff members were killed by two gunmen who’d pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, in what was declared as retaliation for the publication of caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
The shooting, which was followed the next two days by the killing of a police officer and four Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket, rallied much of France against Islamic terrorism. But the attacks also opened debate about freedom of expression and religion, as well as about the country’s longstanding problems of immigration and social exclusion.
France was targeted again on November 13 in an even more deadly terror attack that left 130 people dead. In a speech to police forces Thursday, French President Francois Hollande said the “terrorist threat” would continue to weigh on the country, AP reports.
Meanwhile, Charlie Hebdo remains as defiant as ever, releasing a special anniversary issue Wednesday, with a fugitive, bloodstained God figure carrying a Kalashnikov on its front page.
