World leaders march on streets of Paris over Charlie Hebdo terror victims

World leaders including David Cameron of United Kingdom, Angela Merkel of Germany, Isreal's Benjamin Netanyahu and others joined French president and thousands of France nationals in a solidarity march on the streets of Paris this afternoon to protest the killing of 12 Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. The march began in Place de la République and will end at Place de la Nation.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Paris on Sunday in a massive show of unity and defiance in the face of terrorism that killed 17 people in France's bleakest moment in half a century.

Their arms linked, more than 40 world leaders headed the somber procession, setting aside their differences for a manifestation that French President Francois Hollande said turned the city into "the capital of the world."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood near Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also marched.

The deadly attacks on a satirical newspaper, kosher market and police marked a turning point for France that some compared to Sept. 11. In the weeks and months ahead, the cruelty will test how attached the French — an estimated 5 million of whom are Muslims — really are to their liberties and to each other.

"Our entire country will rise up toward something better," Hollande said Sunday.

The aftermath of the attacks remained raw, with video emerging of one of the gunmen killed during police raids pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing how the attacks were going to unfold. Also, a new shooting was linked to that gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed Friday along with the brothers behind a massacre at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in nearly simultaneous raids by security forces.

At least 3.7 million people marched against extremism across France overnight in the biggest mobilisation ever recorded in the country, the interior ministry said.
In Paris, up to 1.6 million took part in a mammoth procession in memory of the 17 victims of Islamist killings, but it was difficult to give an exact number due to the magnitude of the demonstration, it said.
Outside the French capital, more than 2.5 million joined the rallies.
President Francois Hollande linked arms with world leaders, including the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president, in an historic display of unity.
A sea of humanity flowed through Paris' iconic streets to mourn the victims of the three days of terror that began with the slaughter of 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

"Freedom! Freedom", "Charlie! Charlie!" chanted the vast crowd, in honour of the cartoonists and journalists killed at Charlie Hebdo over its lampooning of the Prophet Mohammed.
The crowd was also marking the death of four Jews killed when an Islamist gunman stormed a kosher supermarket and a policewoman gunned down in cold blood.
Emotions ran high in the grieving City of Light, with many of those marching bursting into tears as they came together under the banner of freedom of speech and liberty after France's worst terrorist bloodbath in more than half a century.
The crowd brandished banners saying: "I'm French and I'm not scared" and, in tribute to the murdered cartoonists, "Make fun, not war" and "Ink should flow, not blood."

People marched through Paris on Sunday in a massive show of unity and defiance in the face of terrorism. Photo / AP
The interior ministry said turnout for the Paris rally was "unprecedented" while French television said rallies across the nation were unseen since the 1944 Liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation.
Isabelle Dahmani, a French Christian married to a Muslim, Mohamed, brought their three young children to show them there is nothing to fear.
Their nine-year-old daughter burst into tears watching the news this week, Isabelle said, adding she had asked if "the bad men are coming to our house?"
The grieving families of those who died in the shootings led the march, alongside the representatives of around 50 countries.
Patrick Pelloux, a Charlie Hebdo columnist, fell sobbing into the arms of Hollande in an emotional embrace.
With dozens of world leaders present, security in the jittery French capital was beefed up, with police snipers stationed on rooftops and plain-clothes officers among the crowd in a city still reeling from the Islamist attacks.
"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," Hollande said. "The entire country will rise up."
More than a million also rallied in cities outside the capital and marches were held in several cities across Europe, including Berlin, Brussels and Madrid.

'We will win'

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pledged that Europe "will win the challenge against terrorism". Earlier he had tweeted using the hashtag #jesuischarlie (I am Charlie), which has already been used more than five million times.
US President Barack Obama was represented by Attorney General Eric Holder, who took part in an emergency meeting of interior ministers to discuss the threats from Islamic extremism.
The ministers urged a strengthening of the EU external borders to limit the movement of extremists returning to Europe from the Middle East and said there was an "urgent need" to share air passenger information.
Hollande has warned his grieving country not to drop its guard in the face of possible new attacks.
Ahead of the march, he met representatives from the Jewish community who said authorities had agreed to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish schools and synagogues in France "if necessary."
The rampage by three gunmen who claimed to be members of the Al-Qaeda and Islamic State extremist groups was followed by a chilling new threat from the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
German newspaper Bild said the bloodshed in France could signal the start of a wave of attacks in Europe, citing communications by Islamic State leaders intercepted by US intelligence.

French President, Francois Hollande, center, his Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, left, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, 2nd right, leave the Elysee Palace to participate in a march to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks and to show unity in Paris. Photo / AP

Rallies extend worldwide

Tens of thousands of people rallied worldwide in solidarity with France, with marchers across Europe and the Middle East chanting "Je suis Charlie" and holding pens in the air.
From Berlin to London and Jerusalem to Beirut, crowds waved French flags and sang the anthem La Marseillaise following the Islamist attacks that killed 17 people.
Christians, Muslims and Jews alike took part in the rallies, held as around 3.3 million people took to the streets in unity marches in France.
In Israel, where four French Jews killed in a Paris supermarket attack will be buried, more than 500 people gathered in Jerusalem in front of a screen reading in French "Jerusalem is Charlie".
"This is an attack on all of us -- on the Jewish people, on freedom of media and expression," Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said. Chief rabbi Shlomo Amar said a prayer for all 17 victims.
Dozens of Palestinians also held a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah, waving Palestinian and French flags and holding up banners reading "Palestine stands with France against terrorism".
Hamas-run Gaza paid tribute to the victims during a candlelit vigil in the enclave.
Across the Atlantic, about 25,000 people marched in a huge rally in Canada's French-speaking city of Montreal, organisers said.
- Europe mourns 'fallen friends' -
In Europe one of the biggest rallies was in Berlin where 18,000 people marched wearing t-shirts saying "Checkpoint Charlie Hebdo" -- a reference to the Cold War-era Checkpoint Charlie in the once-divided German city.
The march comes days after Germany's new anti-Islamic Pegida movement drew 35,000 into the streets of Dresden.
In Brussels, Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck was in a crowd of 20,000, saying he was marching "in honour of my fallen friends" at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
"I know the Muslim community feels wounded and humiliated by these cartoons, but they were not taking aim at Islam but at fundamentalism," he said.
Gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the magazine, which printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that infuriated some Muslims. A third gunman killed a policewoman and four people at a Paris kosher supermarket.
London's famed Trafalgar Square was filled with around 2,000 people raising pencils to the sky and the iconic Tower Bridge was illuminated in the red white and blue of the French flag. Scores of people also rallied in the university city of Oxford.
The British capital experienced its own terror nightmare ten years ago when suicide bombers blew up three underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people on July 7, 2005.
In Madrid's Plaza de Sol, hundreds descended on the streets with red, white and blue French flags, and sang the French national anthem.
Hundreds of Muslims also gathered at Madrid's Atocha station, scene of Spain's worst terror attack, the March 11, 2004 train bombings when Al-Qaeda-inspired bombers killed 191 people.
Veiled women with young children joined groups of young men at the rally, holding up signs that read "I am Muslim and I am not a terrorist".
"We don't want killings carried out in the name of Islam," said Driss Bouzdoudou, 30, who has lived in Spain for 14 years.
- Mideast, Asia rallies -
Elsewhere in Europe, 12,000 people rallied in Vienna and about 3,000 people turned out in driving snow in Stockholm, while some 2,000 people marched in Dublin.
Luxembourg's Grand Duchess Maria Teresa took the rare public step of joining some 2,000 people. In Italy, about 1,000 people gathered in Rome and the same number in Milan, while about 200 people took part in Lisbon.
Meanwhile hundreds of people marched through central Istanbul brandishing pens and flowers, ending up on the steps of the French consulate, and a similar rally took place in Ankara.
But earlier in Istanbul, police arrested two passers-by who shouted "why are you demonstrating for this magazine which insulted the prophet?".
In Beirut, hundreds of Lebanese and French expats held up "Je suis Charlie" signs and pens.
Symbolically, the protesters gathered at Samir Kassir Square, named after an outspoken French-Lebanese journalist who was murdered in 2005.
One protester carried a poster aimed at expressing solidarity not only with France, but also with the suffering of millions of Syrians, whose country has been ravaged by war since 2011.
In Guinea, west Africa, President Alpha Conde joined a demonstration of several hundred people to sign a condolence book at the French embassy, witnesses said. Five hundred people also rallied in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast.
Hours before the Paris march, hundreds of people also demonstrated in Sydney and in Tokyo.

'Armed and dangerous'

France's three days of terror started Wednesday (Thursday NZ time) when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi burst into Charlie Hebdo's offices in central Paris and sprayed bullets into the editorial meeting, killing some of France's best-known cartoonists.
They then slaughtered a Muslim policeman as he lay helpless on the ground before fleeing, sparking a manhunt that lasted more than 48 hours.
A day later, a third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, shot dead a policewoman in a southern Paris suburb.
In a video posted online Sunday, a man who appeared to be Coulibaly said the gunmen coordinated their efforts and claimed he was a member of Islamic State who was avenging attacks by the international community on the extremist group.
The massive hunt for the attackers culminated in twin hostage dramas that gripped the world as Coulibaly stormed into a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris and seized terrified shoppers.
The two brothers took one person hostage in a printing firm northeast of Paris. After a tense stand-off police shot them dead as they charged out of the building all guns blazing.
Moments later, security forces stormed the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, killing Coulibaly but making the grisly discovery that four innocent Jews had died during the hostage-taking.
All four will be buried in Israel tomorrow, the community said.

Investigators have been trying to hunt down Coulibaly's partner, 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, but a security source in Turkey told AFP she arrived there on January 2, before the attacks, and has probably travelled on to Syria.

'Clear failings'

The attacks have raised mounting questions about how the gunmen could have slipped through the net of the intelligence services despite being known to authorities for extremism.
Coulibaly's mother and sisters condemned his actions.
"We absolutely do not share these extreme ideas. We hope there will not be any confusion between these odious acts and the Muslim religion," they said.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitted there had been "clear failings" in intelligence after it emerged that the brothers had been on a US terror watch list "for years".

Rallies were planned throughout France and major cities around the world, including London, Madrid and New York — all attacked by al-Qaida-linked extremists — as well as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere.

Children, grandparents, Muslims, Jews, Christians, workers, bosses — all joined together in streets and plazas thronged with crowds throughout eastern Paris.

On Paris' Republic Square, deafening applause rang out as the world leaders walked past, amid tight security and an atmosphere of togetherness amid adversity. Families of the victims, holding each other for support, marched in the front along with the leaders, along with journalists working for newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the target of the attack that started three days of terror. Several wept openly.

"I Am Charlie," read legions of posters and banners. Many waved editorial cartoons, and the French tricolor and other national flags.

The leaders marched down Voltaire Boulevard — named after the Enlightenment-era figure who symbolizes France's attachment to freedom of expression. One marcher bore a banner with his famed pledge: "I do not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it."

"It's important to be here for freedom for tolerance and for all the victims. It's sad we had to get this point for people to react against intolerance racism and fascism," said Caroline Van Ruymbeke, 32.

The three days of terror began Wednesday when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen said it directed the attack by the masked gunmen to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly's satire. Charlie Hebdo assailed Christianity, Judaism as well as officialdom of all stripes with its brand of sometimes crude satire that sought to put a thumb in the eye of authority and convention.

On Thursday, police said Coulibaly killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and on Friday, the attackers converged. While the Kouachi brothers holed up in a printing plant near Charles de Gaulle airport, Coulibaly seized hostages inside a kosher market. It all ended at dusk Friday with near-simultaneous raids at the printing plant and the market that left all three gunmen dead. Four hostages at the market were also killed.

Five people who were held in connection with the attacks were freed late Saturday, leaving no one in custody, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. Coulibaly's widow is still being sought and was last traced near the Turkey-Syrian border.

Early Sunday, police in Germany detained two men suspected of an arson attack against a newspaper that republished cartoons from Charlie Hebdo. No one was injured in that attack.
"The terrorists want two things: they want to scare us and they want to divide us. We must do the opposite. We must stand up and we must stay united," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French TV channel iTele on Sunday.
France remains on high alert while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network. More than 5,500 police and soldiers were being deployed on Sunday across France, about half of them to protect the march. The others were guarding synagogues, mosques, schools and other sites around France.

"I hope that we will again be able to say we are happy to be Jews in France," said Haim Korsia, the chief rabbi in France, who planned to attend the rally.

At an international conference in India, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France "not just in anger and in outrage, but in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: freedom."
Posthumous video emerged Sunday of Coulibaly, who prosecutors said was newly linked by ballistics tests to a third shooting — the Wednesday attack on a jogger in a Paris suburb that left the 32-year-old man gravely injured. In the video, Coulibaly speaks fluent French and broken Arabic, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing the terror operation he said was about to unfold.
The Kouachi brothers claimed the attacks were planned and financed by al-Qaida in Yemen.
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Sylvie Corbet, Trung Latieule, Oleg Cetinic, John Leicester and Elaine Ganley contributed from Paris. Aron Heller contributed from Jerusalem.

France has responded to the murderous assaults on journalists, police and Jews with an outpouring of grief and national unity, yet once the emotions recede it faces the harder task of neutralising violent Islamists and the conditions that allow them to spread.
The country has mobilised as never before in its postwar history, with millions joining rallies and commemorations for the 17 people killed last week by three gunmen who claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda or Isis (Islamic State).
The dead include the editor and cartoonists of a satirical magazine that had lampooned the Prophet Muhammad, three police officers - one of Arab origin and another of African background - and people at a kosher grocery in eastern Paris.
Their brutal deaths have sparked solidarity, a revival of nationhood and a sense of mission described in French as "un sursaut republicain", meaning a surge in support for the liberties on which the republic was founded.
Beyond the immediate reflex, though, lie challenges requiring unity and purpose for years to come.
They start with the immediate problem of stopping the radicalised-in-waiting and progress to the longer job of changing the social and economic conditions that help to transform alienated young French Muslims into ruthless jihadists.
Priority No1 will be to overhaul domestic intelligence, strengthen protection of Islamists' targets and beef up international security co-operation.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, suspected of carrying out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in central Paris, and an associate, Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the grocery store, were able to go to the Middle East for training, return home, acquire assault rifles, a rocket launcher and explosives and plot their attacks.
None of this was apparently spotted by the security services, even though two of the three had criminal records and were known radicals, and Charlie Hebdo and its editor had received death threats from Islamist groups and were under police protection. "There were flaws, that's obvious," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the three were shot dead by police, ending a twin hostage drama at the kosher store and a village northeast of the capital.
"This is why we have to learn from what happened. We owe this duty in truth to the victims, their families and our fellow citizens."
The authorities must also reform France's prisons, where Cherif Kouachi and Coulibaly became radicalised through contact with an Islamist fellow inmate.
Experts consider the transformation a classic process: companionship, mentoring and jihadist instruction give a delinquent or lost soul an identity and holy mission.
The orphaned Kouachi brothers were brought up in state institutions and were known to the police for delinquency.
France was reminded of the prison problem through Mohammed Merah, who in 2012 killed seven people, including three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and Mehdi Nemmouche, who is suspected of murdering three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last June.
It is now bound to get closer attention. Potential solutions include smarter monitoring of extremists in penitentiaries, better facilities in prison and support for those behind bars or returning to civilian life, including spiritual backing.
"There aren't enough [Muslim] prison chaplains," said Yaniss Warrach, who visits inmates at Alencon-Conde in Normandy, one of France's bleakest prisons.
"Inmates who have a spiritual void end up in the orbit of inmates who grow a beard and practise sectarian beliefs."
There are only 132 chaplains for a nationwide prison population of 67,000, although this compares with just 32 chaplains in 2012, Warrach told AFP. Then there is the longer need of integration. France has more than five million Muslims, the most of any country in Europe, in a population of 65 million.
Most of them are immigrants, or their descendants, from the country's former colonies in North and West Africa and Lebanon.
Despite the avowed "republican" goal of equality, the incomes, housing, educational and professional attainment of Muslims clearly fall far below the national average.
But data on the basis of ethnic or religious background is absent in French statistics.
Apart from football and music, there are few examples of success by this group, and they have a particularly dismal lack of role models in the media and politics.
"The challenges of integration persist," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said last month.
Changing this so Muslims feel more of a stake, a greater ownership in the republic will require resources, a willingness on both sides to communicate and share, according to Max Gallo, a historian and former minister. "We have to consider members of the Muslim community to be fully fledged French citizens, to integrate them as we have done in the past with Italians or other French people of different origins," Gallo told Le Parisien.
"It also requires efforts on [Muslims'] part. Muslims need to speak out clearly whether they wish to be assimilated and what this will imply in terms of their religion."
But reaching out is a big ask at a time of cripplingly high unemployment, shrinking budgets and deep anxiety after extremists claiming to act in the name of Islam carried out a double massacre.
An Ifop poll at the weekend suggests most French people do not view Muslim fellow citizens as a danger - but many think otherwise of their religion. Sixty-six per cent agreed with the statement "no link should be made between Muslims living peacefully in France and radical Islamists" while 29 per cent agreed with the statement, "Islam represents a threat".

Trail of clues led police to suspects

A fingerprint smudged on a Molotov cocktail, an identity card left in a getaway car and DNA found in a balaclava all helped French police piece together the identity of the jihadist gunmen who held the country in a three-day grip of terror.
A few crucial mistakes would allow police to quickly identify them in a colossal manhunt that would culminate in a dramatic showdown leaving all three dead.
The grisly scene inside the Charlie Hebdo building where eight journalists, a police guard and a visitor were killed revealed 31 Kalashnikov bullet casings, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
Outside, some 25 bullet casings from a 9-millimetre handgun were scattered around as the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi climbed into their parked Citroen and fled to the north of Paris. But an accident forced them to abandon their car, giving investigators crucial information, such as Said's identity card.
Cherif's fingerprint was found on one of 10 Molotov cocktails, while Molins revealed police had also found a "jihadist flag" of the type used by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Isis (Islamic State).
That same afternoon police issued arrest warrants for the brothers and took Cherif's wife into custody.
Enter Amedy Coulibaly. The petty criminal believed to have become radicalised in prison was armed to the teeth when he was involved in a car accident before sunrise the next morning in Montrouge south of Paris.
Masked and wearing a bullet-proof vest, he fired on police coming to investigate with a Kalashnikov and handgun, killing a policewoman and injuring a municipal worker. He hijacked a car, dropping his balaclava as he fled.
Within two hours police were able to match DNA from the balaclava with that of Coulibaly. Cherif's wife confirmed to police the two men knew each other "very well" and she and Coulibaly's wife were found to have spoken by phone more than 500 times in the past year.