Survivors Retrace The Horror At Charlie Hebdo

A chilling account here.

According to a witness quoted in the French news media, the killers opened fire, killing Mr. Boisseau and spraying the lobby with so much gunfire that some people thought a scaffold was falling.

Moments later, according to witnesses, the men raced up the stairs, their machine guns at the ready, and headed to the editorial room.

“Where is Charb? Where is Charb?” they shouted, using a widely known nickname for Mr. Charbonnier. Spotting their target, a trim, bespectacled man, the men aimed and fired.

Then, witnesses said, they executed the newspaper’s chief cartoonists where they sat, frozen, before massacring nearly everyone else in the room in a hail of fire.

“It lasted about five minutes,” said Ms. Rey, shaken and afraid. “They spoke perfect French and claimed to be from Al Qaeda.”

Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who had decided to come in that morning to take part in the meeting, thought she would be killed when one of the men approached her.

Instead, she told French news media, the man said, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,” she recalled.

Remember though, Howard Dean says the terrorists aren't Muslim. And really, who would know better, the Muslim terrorists themselves or Howard Dean?

posted by BenK at 08:51 AM

| Access Comments