Man who attacked two outside Charlie Hebdo offices charged with attempted murder

A French police officer stands near the Opera Bastille where the man was arrested

Credit: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo

A Pakistani man was charged with attempted murder and terrorism last night (on Tuesday) after confessing to wounding two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Zaher Hassan Mahmood, 25, told prosecutors he had not known that the newspaper had moved premises after two Islamist extremists shot dead 12 people at its office in 2015.

He confessed to carrying out the attack on Friday, saying he acted out of anger that Charlie Hebdo recently republished cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. 

They appeared at the start of an ongoing trial of alleged accomplices in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who were shot dead by police. 

The choice to reprint the cartoons sparked protests as far away as Istanbul

Credit: OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images

Al Qaeda claimed the attack in revenge for the weekly’s initial publication of the cartoons, which it said blasphemed Islam.

Mahmood also admitted to prosecutors that he had lied about his age when he arrived in France two years ago to obtain residency as an unaccompanied minor and claim child welfare benefits.

When arrested on Friday, he told police his name was Hassan Ali and gave his age as 18.

He later admitted his true identity and age after a photo of his Pakistani passport was found in his mobile phone. He did not claim an affiliation with a specific terrorist group. 

Not a known Islamist radical, he was not on France’s terrorism watch list. He had been arrested in June in possession of a cleaver after being involved in a fight among Pakistanis, but was cautioned and released. In the attack on Friday, hee injured a woman and a man who work for a TV production company with offices in the building where Charlie Hebdo was formerly based.

He told prosecutors he had planned to set the newspaper’s office on fire and was carrying three bottles of flammable white spirit.

Jean-François Ricard, a counter-terrorism prosecutor, said Mahmood had reconnoitred the area on three separate days shortly before his attack.

“In his telephone, we found a three-minute video in Urdu, in which he announces his plan, saying: “Here in France they make caricatures about our pure and great Prophet Muhammad… Today, I will revolt against this.”

The attack came as a painful reminder of the terror threat in France. The disclosure that the perpetrator lied about his age has also focussed public attention on migrants falsely claiming to be minors.

Jean-Louis Thiériot, a conservative MP, said: “Nearly 80 per cent of unaccompanied foreign minors in Seine-et-Marne [outside Paris] are frauds. We’ve seen migrants in their 40s claiming to be minors.”