‘What I regret is to see how little people fight to defend freedom. If we don’t fight for our freedom, we live like a slave and we promote a deadly ideology.’
Absolutely. But Laurent Sourisseau is one of the only people who will dare to say such a thing in the mainstream public discourse today. Cowardice is pandemic. That’s why the very foundations of free societies are so severely threatened.
“Charlie Hebdo chief says the magazine has ‘nothing to regret’ in publishing cartoons of prophet Mohammed, adding: ‘If we don’t fight for our freedom we promote a deadly ideology,'” by Jack Newman, Daily Mail, September 9, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
The current director of Charlie Hebdo says the magazine has ‘nothing to regret’ for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
Laurent Sourisseau, known as ‘Riss’ and who was himself badly wounded in the shoulder in the attack, said on Wednesday he stands by the controversial editorial decision which angered Muslims all over the world.
He was speaking at the trial of 14 suspected accomplices to the 2015 attacks at the satirical magazine’s offices and a Jewish supermarket that left a total of 17 dead.
Sourisseau said: ‘I don’t want to be dependent on the insane arbitrariness of fanatics.’
He added ‘there is nothing to regret’ in having published the caricatures of Mohammed in 2006.
‘What I regret is to see how little people fight to defend freedom. If we don’t fight for our freedom, we live like a slave and we promote a deadly ideology.’
Ten people were killed inside the offices of Charlie Hebdo including Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, 76, Georges Wolinski, 80, and Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier, 47, who were among France’s most celebrated cartoonists.
Sourisseau, 53, who succeeded Charb as head of the publication, insisted that freedom is ‘not something that drops from the sky’.
‘We grew up without imagining that one day our freedoms would be put into question.’
Recalling the horror of the attack by the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, he said: ‘The immediate sensation after the attack is that you have been cut in half and you were being deprived of a part of yourself.’
Sourisseau now lives under round the clock protection. ‘It is like I am under house arrest.’
Defiant as ever, Charlie Hebdo last week republished the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, drawing new condemnation from states including Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.
‘If we had given up the right to publish these cartoons, that would mean that we were wrong to do so’ in the first place, he said.
He followed a survivor of the 2015 attack who revealed at court on Wednesday how the gunmen said ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is greatest), then shot him with their Kalashnikov rifles.
He said that after being shot he lost consciousness, and the gunmen moved on to other targets.
Speaking to a French court on Wednesday, Fieschi, 36, was forced to relive his traumatic experiences during the trial of 14 suspects accused of aiding the gunmen.
The survivor limped to the witness box using a crutch and declined to offer a seat, testifying standing.
The magazine’s webmaster said: ‘It was all very quick for me.
‘I remember the door opening violently, and gunshots. I remember a man who said: ‘Allahu akbar,’ and then, ‘We don’t kill women’….