The verdict is in. Zaheer Mahmood, who seriously injured two people on rue Nicolas Appert, near the former premises of Charlie Hebdo in September 2020, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The public prosecutor had requested on Tuesday January 21 30 years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security period, as well as a ban on possessing a weapon for 15 years and a permanent ban from French territory. This Thursday, January 23, Zaheer Mahmood, author of the attack in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdowas sentenced to 30 years in prison and permanently banned from French territory. The attack took place on September 25, 2020, in the middle of the trial of the attack against Charlie Hebdo from January 2015.
That day, Zaheer Mahmood, a 25-year-old Pakistani who had arrived in France two years earlier, went to rue Nicolas Appert, determined to attack the satirical weekly when it had just republished the caricatures of Mohammed. A publication which caused a stir in his country of origin where anti-French demonstrations had broken out. He was unaware then that the writing of Charlie Hebdo had moved. Armed with a butcher’s sheet, the young man, who grew up in a Pakistan where blasphemers risk the death penalty, attacked two employees of the Premières Lignes press agency who were smoking under a porch, seriously injuring them.
“I came to set fire to the office”
“When I arrived there, I didn’t have in mind that I was going to hurt these people. I had come to set fire to the office. When I got closer, suddenly, I felt that someone was laughing I thought it was people from. Charlie Hebdo who made fun of me. I put down my bag, took out a butcher’s sheet, and I attacked”, explained during his interrogation the assailant who, during the trial, admitted a “terrorist act”, reports Le Figaro. Judged alongside five of his compatriots, sentenced to 3 to 12 years of imprisonment for having “motivated and supported” the author of the attack, Zaheer Mahmood spoke one final time this Thursday morning, on the occasion of the final words of the accused. After asking the court to “give him some hope of finding some semblance of life once he leaves prison”, the young man had a few words for his victims, wishing them “a lot of happiness in their lives”, he then shared his hope of one day obtaining their forgiveness. Zaheer Mahmood now has ten days to appeal.