Charlie Hebdo co-founder says murdered editor 'dragged team' to their deaths

[Devil Soul]

One of the founding members of Charlie Hebdo has accused its slain editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, or Charb, of “dragging the team” to their deaths by releasing increasingly provocative cartoons, as five million copies of the “survivors’ edition” went on sale.

Henri Roussel, 80, who contributed to the first issue of the satirical weekly in 1970, wrote to the murdered editor, saying: “I really hold it against you.”

In this week’s Left-leaning magazine Nouvel Obs, Mr Roussel, who publishes under the pen name Delfeil de Ton, wrote: “I know it’s not done”, but proceeds to criticise the former “boss” of the magazine.

Calling Charb an “amazing lad”, he said he was also a stubborn “block head”.

“What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it,” he said, referring to Charb’s decision to post a Mohammed character on the magazine’s front page in 2011. Soon afterwards, the magazine’s offices were burned down by unknown arsonists.

Delfeil adds: “He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012.”

The accusation sparked a furious reaction from Richard Malka, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer for the past 22 years, who sent an angry message to Mathieu Pigasse, one of the owners of Nouvel Obs and Le Monde.

“Charb has not yet even been buried and Obs finds nothing better to do that to publish a polemical and venomous piece on him.

“The other day, the editor of Nouvel Obs, Matthieu Croissandeau, couldn’t shed enough tears to say he would continue the fight. I didn’t know he meant it this way. I refuse to allow myself to be invaded by bad thoughts, but my disappointment is immense.”

Matthieu Croissandeau, Nouvel Obs’ editor, said: "We received this text and after a debate I decided to publish it in an edition on freedom of expression, it would have seemed to me worrisome to have censored his voice, even if it is discordant. Particularly as this is the voice of one of the pioneers of the gang."

This is not the first time Delfeil has disagreed with the modern Charlie, accusing Charb’s predecessor of turning it into a Zionist and Islamophobic organ.

That was after Philippe Val, the previous editor, fired one of its historic figures, Maurice Sine, for publishing a cartoon on the marriage of Nicolas Sarkozy’s son, Jean, to a Jewish retailing heiress, which he considered anti-Semitic.

Delfeil said he would not say anymore on recent events. “I have refused to speak to the TV and radio, to everyone. I kept my message for Obs, and I am not prepared to open this subject again,” he said.
Charlie Hebdo founder says slain editor 'dragged' team to their deaths - Telegraph

 

[Steve781]

I've always thought people should have the "right" to publish cartoons without persecution or violence. But it's a bit like having the "right" to leave your doors and windows open at night without being burgled. It isn't very responsible is it?

 

[PlanetWarrior]

I've always thought people should have the "right" to publish cartoons without persecution or violence. But it's a bit like having the "right" to leave your doors and windows open at night without being burgled. It isn't very responsible is it?

I support freedom of the media. Looking at some the cartoons published by Charlie though I must question the line between the right to publish as satire and the right to insult, defame and frankly dehumanize a person revered as a Prophet and the founder of the Islamic religion. Whilst I believe that those who committed this terrorist act were plainly stupid, what Charlie in effect did was tantamount to a Muslim or a Jew or a Hindu walking into a church in some Ku Klux Klan dominated town in the South of the old USA and proclaiming loudly in the middle of that church of rednecks that "Jesus was a fake mofo". The reaction from that congregation may off course be unwarranted and unjustified but can anybody really question whether the reaction was unforseen ? That is in effect what this co-founder of Charlie is saying

 

[Dubious]

“What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it,” he said, referring to Charb’s decision to post a Mohammed character on the magazine’s front page in 2011. Soon afterwards, the magazine’s offices were burned down by unknown arsonists.

Delfeil adds: “He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012.”

Repeated bad habits to provoke is not exactly exercising any form of freedom!

 

[Khalid Newazi]

If France had any freedom of speech then they wouldn't have jailed Dieudonne nor would they have cancelled his show for being "Anti-Semitic".