Early on January 7, 2015, armed, masked gunmen burst into the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and killed 17 people in a brutal terrorist attack. France will observe the first anniversary of the attack today.
Less than a year later, in November, Paris was attacked again by terrorists, who killed 129 people and wounded another 352 in one of the worst terrorist attacks in that country.
While Charlie Hebdo was not new to attacks, the shootings were certainly the most ferocious ever. It was fire-bombed by extremists in 2011 after publishing a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad. A recently-published cartoon of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is said to have provoked the gunmen, suspected to be ISIS sympathisers, who carried out the attack. According to media reports, witnesses heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) in Arabic.
The attacks sparked protests in support of the magazine as people across the world took to the streets with signs reading saying "Je Suis Charlie" (I am Charlie).
Days after the attack, the magazine returned to newsstands. According to a report by Alan Cowell, vendors reported that their allotment of the publication had sold out before daybreak, and demand was so intense that copies of the newspaper were being offered on eBay for hundreds of dollars. Vendors drew up waiting lists of customers in anticipation of new supplies for a print run that could reach five million, compared with 60,000 before the attacks.
The magazine also received 4.3 million euros in donations after the attacks.
However, not everybody agreed with the style and content of the magazine. Following the attack, in India, separatist Kashmiri leaders such as Syed Ali Geelani and Mohammad Yasin Malik called for a shutdown to protest against the content of the magazine.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blasted the cartoons as "an insult to the sacred religion of Islam and the Muslim world".
The attack left some of the surviving staff of the magazine traumatised. In a May 2015 interview, Cartoonist Renald Luzier, who drew the newspaper's first cover after the January 7 attack killed 12 people, said that each issue is "torture, because the others are no longer there." He said would leave the magazine in September.
In July 2015, Iceland's parliament voted widely in favour of decriminalising blasphemy, in the name of freedom of expression in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
The magazine announced that it would release nearly a million copies of a special issue to mark the anniversary of the attack.
The 32-page double issue featured a selection of drawings by the cartoonists who died in the attack, as well as by current staff and messages of support.
The cover of the special edition, which featured God as a gun-wielding terrorist, drew criticism from the Vatican.
Days before the anniversary, which comes just months after the deadly November 2015 Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques in memory of the victims of the attack.
Speaking on the first anniversary of the attacks, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “Their legacy endures as a challenge and inspiration to all of us. Charlie Hebdo continues to publish, and journalists around the world continue in their essential mission to tell the stories that people everywhere need to hear."
