PARIS: A man armed with a meat cleaver wounded two in Paris on Friday outside the former offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo before being arrested by police, three weeks into the trial of suspected accomplices in the 2015 massacre of the magazine’s staff.

France’s PNAT specialist anti-terror prosecution office said it had opened a probe into charges of “attempted murder related to a terrorist enterprise” as well as “conspiracy with terrorists”.

Charlie Hebdo has angered Muslims around the world by publishing sketches of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) over the years; ahead of the trial also it reprinted some of the sketches on its front cover this month.

Twelve people, including some of France’s most well-known cartoonists, were killed in the Jan 7, 2015, attack on Charlie Hebdo by gunmen.

Two wounded; initial investigations show attacker was born in Pakistan

Paris police said two people were “critically wounded” in Friday’s attack near the paper’s former offices in the capital’s 11th district. The magazine’s new address is kept secret for security reasons.

A large meat cleaver found near the scene is believed to have been used by the attacker.

Prime Minister Jean Castex, visiting the scene with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, said the lives of the two victims “are not in danger, thank God”.

The Premieres Lignes news production agency said the wounded were its employees — a man and a woman taking a cigarette break outside.

“They were both very badly wounded,” the founder and co-head of Premieres Lignes, Paul Moreira, said.

Another employee, who asked not to be named, said he heard screams. “I went to the window and saw a colleague, bloodied, being chased by a man with a machete.”

The company specialises in investigative reports and produces the prize-winning Cash Investigation programme.

Paris prosecutors said the “main perpetrator” was arrested near the Place de la Bastille square, not far from the scene of the crime.

According to PNAT head Jean-Francois Ricard, the suspect was an 18-year-old man. Initial indications are that he was born in Pakistan.

A second person, aged 33, was arrested in the Bastille area later and held for questioning to determine possible links to the “main perpetrator”, said Ricard. The reason for the second arrest has not been divulged.

Five schools in the area went into lockdown for several hours after the attack, and half a dozen nearby metro stations were closed.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2020