Stabbing attack outside former Charlie Hebdo office in Paris leaves 2 wounded
Paris — Police in the French capital arrested one man after a stabbing attack outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Friday. The Paris Police later confirmed there were no other suspects being sought.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex confirmed the attack, which police said had left two people wounded. Both victims, believed to be employees of a video production company that uses the office building, were left in serious but not life-threatening condition, according to the police.
The Paris prosecutor's office opened a terrorism investigation into the stabbing not long after the suspect was apprehended on Friday.
Elite police intervention units were on at the scene and a security cordon was quickly put up around the area.
The building in the eastern 11th district of Paris was the scene of the deadly January 2015 attack carried out by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who entered the offices on January 7 and killed 11 people, including eight Charlie Hebdo editorial staffers.
As they fled the scene, the brothers killed a policeman who had been posted on guard outside the newspaper's offices, after it received numerous threats.
Those threats related to Charlie Hebdo's publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe his likeness should not displayed or published, and millions took offense, sparking huge protests across the Muslim world.
The two brothers were later shot dead by police.
A trial for that attack opened in Paris on September 2. The newspaper marked the occasion by republishing some of the cartoons of the Islamic prophet. Al Qaeda recently renewed its calls for attacks targeting the newspaper, which now operates out of a secret, heavily-guarded location.
Charlie Hebdo journalists continue to receive threats, but its defiant director Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau, who was among those injured in the 2015 attack, vowed in the edition published earlier this month: "We will never give in. And we will never give up."
It has taken five and a half years for the case to come to trial. In that time, investigators have pieced together the chain of events that led to the attacks, first on the Charlie Hebdo offices, then two days later at a Jewish supermarket in a Paris suburb.
Initially police thought the second attack was the work of a copycat. However, in building their case, investigators found the two were closely coordinated, and that the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly — who killed a policewoman on January 8 and then four men during the hostage-taking at the Hyper Cacher supermarket on January 9 — had several accomplices in common.
On trial are 14 people accused of helping the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly. They face a range of charges including providing material support, funding, buying weapons, and procuring a getaway car for the attackers. They face possible sentences between 10 years and life imprisonment.