Paris (AFP)
The issue of Charlie Hebdo in which the cartoons of Muhammad, who had made him a target of Islamist terrorism in 2015, were republished on day one and is being reprinted, the newspaper told AFP on Friday. satirical.
The number published on Wednesday, titled "Tout ça pour ça", and which includes in one the caricatures published by the weekly in 2006, had been printed in 200,000 copies (three times the usual volume) which were all sold from the first day , says one in the newspaper.
Two hundred thousand copies are being reprinted and will be available from Saturday, the same source said.
For the cartoonist Juin, who joined Charlie Hebdo after the terrorist attack of January 7, 2015, where pillars of the newspaper were killed by jihadists, "it shows that we are supported, that freedom of expression, secularism, the right to blasphemy are not obsolete values and that they are supported by the French who chose to buy this number ".
The newspaper had taken the decision, very strong, to republish in this issue the caricatures of Mohammed, as well as a drawing made by Cabu and also representing the prophet.
The editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo considered that these documents constituted "pieces of evidence", the understanding of which was necessary, while the trial of the January 2015 attacks, including the one that struck Charlie Hebdo, opened Wednesday in Paris.
"People saw that there was an issue behind these assassinations and they wanted to assert their position in relation to the discourse that can be heard from certain politicians, or from certain people, who turn out to be communitarians or separatists", added June, interviewed by AFP.
"We assumed that some people were unaware of these cartoons, some were not even born when they were published by Charlie in 2006, and they needed to understand why these murders were" committed "in 2015. For us, it was essential to make them exist through this document, ”explained Juin.
"The right to blasphemy and freedom of expression only exist if we use them and for us, it was justified to republish these cartoons because it shows that these rights still exist and it allows us to defend them" , added the designer.
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