ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office condemned the decision by French magazine Charlie Hebdo to reprint offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) that in 2015 caused widespread protests around the Muslim world and are seen to have motivated a gun attack against the publication.
Now, five and a half years after gunmen killed a dozen people in an attack on the offices of the satirical weekly, it announced on Tuesday that it would reprint the cartoons. An editorial to accompany the cartoons, set to come out Wednesday, today, will coincide with the start of a trial related to the attack and said the paper’s staff “will never lie down.”
“#Pakistan condemns in the strongest terms the decision by the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, to re-publish deeply offensive caricature of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),” the Pakistani foriegn office tweeted on Tuesday night.
“Such a deliberate act to offend the sentiments of billions of Muslims cannot be justified as an exercise in press freedom or freedom of expression. Such actions undermine the global aspirations for peaceful co-existence as well as social and inter-faith harmony,” the FO said.
The Charlir Hebdo trial involves 14 people who are alleged to have given logistically and material support to the 2015 attackers. They face between 10 years and life in prison if convicted.
