PARIS:
A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in prison for attempting to murder two people outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices in 2020 with a meat cleaver.
When he carried out the attack, Zaheer Mahmood, 29, wrongly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which had been targeted by Islamists a decade ago for blasphemous caricatures.
The newspaper had indeed moved following the assault on its premises by two masked armed men linked to Al-Qaeda, who killed 12 people, including eight members of the newspaper’s editorial staff.
Originally from rural Pakistan, Mahmood arrived in France illegally in the summer of 2019. The court had previously heard how Mahmood was influenced by radical preacher Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who called for the beheading of blasphemers to “avenge the Prophet (PBUH).”
Mahmood was found guilty of attempted murder and terrorist plot and banned from ever setting foot on French soil again.
On September 25, 2020, around 11:40 a.m. (10:40 GMT), Mahmood arrived in front of the former address of Charlie Hebdo.
Armed with a butcher’s cleaver, he then seriously injured two employees of the Premières Lignes press agency.
Five other Pakistanis, some of whom were minors at the time, were on trial alongside Mahmood on charges of terrorist conspiracy for supporting and encouraging his actions.
The special assize court for minors in the French capital handed down sentences of three to 12 years in prison against Mahmood’s co-defendants, as well as an inadmissibility for those who were adults.
All were included on the list of French terrorists. None of the six present in the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present during the sentencing, but did not wish to comment on the outcome of the trial.
