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 |  Subject: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting  Fri May 03, 2019 8:21 am | |
| I read the book by Maryse Wolinski, the wife of one of the journalists killed during the attack. The book is untitled "Darling, I'm Going to Charlie" and I read it in English because I bought it in a charity shop in London. It's very interesting and it focuses on the shooting, her mourning and the aftermath for Charlie Hebdo. She also talks about how the police both ignored threats before the attack and badly responded during the shooting. Here are some extracts I found interesting: - p. 11-12 about how the attackers looked and how people thought there was a third man:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- Thomas will never forget the way he looks at him, like a wild animal.
Like Thomas, Joseph, a worker from a nearby construction site, observes the car that parks at the corner of the allée Verte and the rue Nicolas-Appert. Doors slamming and shouting. Surprised, Joseph, like Nathalie and Julien, goes out to see what’s happening. They all can see, more or less clearly, three men in black balaclavas coming out of the Citroën. The first man, the driver, is talking with the other two, who are armed with assault weapons and wearing bulletproof vests and extra cartridges slung over their shoulders. Their voices are loud, shrill, but no one understands what they’re saying. Thomas thinks he should call the police, but something tells him that if they move, they will be putting their lives in danger. “Are they the GIGN?” Nathalie asks. Thomas and Julien also think it’s some kind of GIGN operation, even though they know that the French counterterror police units never go out in such small numbers.
The two armed men head for 6, allée Verte. The third, the driver, visibly unarmed but wearing a bulletproof vest and a balaclava to hide his face, disappears – but Nathalie, Thomas, and Julien don’t notice. “Something’s happening at Charlie Hebdo,” Thomas says. All three of them hide behind the truck. Nathalie, a fan of Charlie Hebdo when she was young, is surprised. “Is that where they work?” she asks. “There was a police van watching the building until November,” Thomas adds. His last words are drowned out by sound of gunfire inside number 6. In fact there was no third man.
- p. 14-15, about a threat before the shooting:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- Laurent remembered that in the middle of September, one of the journalists from the press agency had been smoking outside on the street when a car stopped in front of him. The driver shouted: “Is this where they find it funny to criticize the Prophet?” The journalist didn’t reply. Then the driver added: “You can tell them we’re watching them.” The journalist took down the car’s license plate number and gave the information to Franck Brinsolaro, Charb’s bodyguard. Franck sent the information to his superiors at the SDLP. (The SDLP is a protection unit that is part of the French equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security) But protection for Charlie Hebdo still hadn’t been increased. They had tried to identify the driver but it had been decided he had nothing to do with terrorism. Now he’s supposedly in a psychiatric facility.
- p. 21:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- It is eleven thirty; a drawing by Honoré is posted on Twitter, sending Charlie Hebdo’s best wishes to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.
- p. 23-24, about Coco opening the door to the terrorists:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- As Coco and Angélique walk down the stairs, they are surprised to hear shouting at the front of the building. They find themselves face-to-face with the two armed men. “You’re Coco, and you’re gonna take us to Charlie Hebdo,” one of them orders. “And you,” the other one says to Angélique, “you stay here.” What is going through Coco’s mind, a Kalashnikov pointed at her head, ordered to tale men she understands to be terrorists in to the paper’s office, while she is supposed to doubt, she is terribly torn, something only she knows, because, out of decency, no one has asked her that question. She thinks she can stall while taking them to the third floor. Her legs are shaking as she climbs the stairs, the gun still pointed at her head. “Where’s Charlie Hebdo?” the man in black shouts. On the office door, there is no mention of the satirical newspaper, just the name LES EDITION ROTATIVES. The men grow impatient, their gestures more violent. On the second floor, Coco stops in front of a door with an electronic entry system. The man tells her to enter the code. At that moment, did she thinks about her child, like Chantal? About her colleagues an friends who are in the room, about to share the Epiphany cake? Her colleagues and friends who are about to be assassinated. Coco enters the code.
Edouard, a journalist at Premières Lignes, is still hiding with some of his colleagues. They take turns watching what is happening in the corridor by looking through the peephole. They hear screams. The men in black that Edouard saw are ordering a woman they are calling Coco to enter the code to open the door. Edouard and the others do not know Coco. Edouard has run into Cabu and Georges several times, but he has never really gotten to know the team. The journalists understand what is about to happen. They see the two men in black in the corridor about to go into Charlie Hebdo’s offices. Edouard has the idea of setting off the fire alarm but changes his mind, thinking it might provoke a catastrophe.
- p. 33, about a man who filmed the policeman being murdered:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- In the building on the other side of the street, a man has heard everything; he opens his window and starts the video camera on his cell phone. He sees the police officer fall onto the sidewalk, writhing in pain. Two armed men dressed all in black go over to him. One of them gets closer to the wounded man: “So you wanted to kill us, huh?” he sniggers. The policeman tries to get up and begs: “Don’t, man, it’s OK.” The killer aims his Kalashnikov and murders him in cold blood.
The man at the window is beside himself by what he has just witnessed. He immediately posts the video on Facebook. The sight of a murder taking place as it happens would be seen all over the world and cause shock waves in social media. A few minutes later, the video post would be taken down. Today, the man who filmed it calls himself a “hostage” of the events he regrets having filmed. He did not realize the risk he was running. And since then, he can’t sleep.
- p. 46, about the policemen being too shocked to get close to the bodies:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- One of them says that when the police went into the Charlie editorial room, they were shocked by the sight of the massacre before their eyes. Devastated, they had difficulty going inside and leaning over the victims. An officer with a loud voice then shouted: “Are there any survivors? Come out!”
- p. 88, about seeing the body of her husband at the morgue:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- In the morgue, I wanted to take a picture of him, to keep this final image of him forever. The psychologist advised against it. Feeling so emotional, I didn’t ask her why. Today I regret it. That picture may have saved me some time.
- p. 97, about the equipment of policemen:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- Only three days a year are dedicated to training a French police officer in the use of firearms – insufficient to turn them into crack snipers, fighters who would measure up to the challenge posed by jihadists. And another major problem is their bulletproof vests: the most effective one weighs twenty-two pounds! So many police officers wear a lighter one – which is totally useless against rounds from a Kalashnikov.
- p. 109, about security after the shooting:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- February, a month after the attack, the Charlie survivors visited their umpteenth new offices with good company: specialists in armor-plating and bombproof systems. From that point onward, they would be working in a bunker. Writing these lines, I recall what Patrick Pelloux said shortly after the attack, explaining on TV that “for the Charlie team, it wasn’t possible to work in a bunker. They didn’t talk about security.”
So it took the murder of ten of them, Georges included, for them to stop working in a carefree way.
- p. 113, about the issue of security in Charlie's building:
- Maryse Wolinski wrote:
- Finally, the paper's own management team decided that a simple video camera would be installed in the entrance.
"Could we force them to protect themselves against their will?" the inspector wondered aloud when I asked him if they couldn't have been obliged to accept the security measures.
Last edited by Neah on Fri May 03, 2019 2:26 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 12:03 pm | |
| I was unaware a book on Charlie was out. I read the excerpts you posted. Sounds like an interesting read. I’m def going to try and track it down. Thank you. |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 2:28 pm | |
| It's interesting and moving and it's short (127 pages). I usually don't like to read but I liked this book. |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 3:12 pm | |
| Thank you for sharing! Though I clearly remember the shooting, I don't know very much about it. |
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Primate Murder
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 4:08 pm | |
| It is one of my favorite cases to read on the internet, aside from the November Paris Attacks. I would have gotten better info if I am not suffering from poverty. | |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 5:47 pm | |
| - AmericaMan wrote:
- It is one of my favorite cases to read on the internet, aside from the November Paris Attacks. I would have gotten better info if I am not suffering from poverty.
Tommy QTR once posted a good documentary about the shooting iirc, I'll try to find it. Here are a two cartoons that were in the "survivor's issue": [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Fri May 03, 2019 6:01 pm | |
| [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] : Here is the documentary about the January 2015 attacks And the Netflix documentary series about November 13 was very well done and very moving, I recommend you watch it if you have the opportunity. |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Sat May 04, 2019 11:31 am | |
| - Neah wrote:
- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] : Here is the documentary about the January 2015 attacks
And the Netflix documentary series about November 13 was very well done and very moving, I recommend you watch it if you have the opportunity. I think there is a documentary on the January attacks on Netflix too, well in my region nonetheless. It's just called Je suis Charlie or something like that. | |
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| | Subject: Re: Details about the Charlie hebdo shooting Sat May 04, 2019 12:09 pm | |
| - UncontinuedProcess wrote:
- Neah wrote:
- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] : Here is the documentary about the January 2015 attacks
And the Netflix documentary series about November 13 was very well done and very moving, I recommend you watch it if you have the opportunity.
I think there is a documentary on the January attacks on Netflix too, well in my region nonetheless. It's just called Je suis Charlie or something like that. I checked and for now there is nothing on Netflix here. The documentary you mentioned has been on Netflix but it's not there anymore, it was indeed called Je suis Charlie (L'humour à mort in French). It's a shame because it seemed good and Coco was interviewed. I feel really sad for her. |
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