I SAW THE HORROR
Laurent Léger, reporter of "Charlie Hebdo" who survived the massacre, tells his story
LePoint reports:
http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/charlie-hebdo-j-ai-vu-l-horreur-08-01-2015-1895074_23.php
Translation:
The killers who raided Charlie Hebdo called the name
Charb, the cartoonist and director of the publication and one of the 12 who died during the attack, according to Laurent Léger, reporter with Charlie Hebdo and survivor of the shooting, on Thursday. "At one time, they uttered the name of Charb (...), I think they were looking for him, but he was at the table anyway," he told France Info, belying the information that the attackers had asked the identity of people they wanted to shoot. "They fired into the crowd, simply."
"I saw a hooded man, I saw a lot of blood, I saw half of the editorial staff on the floor. I still wonder how I managed to escape alive," he said, summing up his story in three words: "I saw the horror."
"It was the end of the editorial meeting and all of a sudden we heard some" fireworks ", then the door opened, a type jumped in shouting Allah Akbar," he recounted with emotion. "It happened very quickly"
"He looked like a type GIGN or Raid, he was hooded, he was all in black, he had a gun he was holding with both hands, and then it fired, and then the smell of powder and luckily, I was able to throw myself behind a table in a corner, I escaped his eyes (...) and the comrades of the magazine were shot down," he further said.
"It happened very fast. (...) I'm still in shock and no one of that small group of survivors has yet realized it was real reality,"the journalist said. "I saw the others on the ground, the sound of explosions, and then suddenly all was silence. We rushed to the wounded, I held the hand of our webmaster," he continued.
Asked about the risk of an attack that weighed on the editors for several years, the reporter replied. "It was unbelievable (...) Charb felt more threatened than others, we had chosen to ignore this threat."
"We will try to make a small magazine next week. We'll do something. This is important," he said, adding that the team of Charlie Hebdo had "received thousands of messages, SMS , from every country". "I do not want to make the magazine as an obituary, I want us to do a magazine to speak out about the challenge to exist, the challenge of saying things, the challenge to continue the fight against stupidity, against human stupidity, against obscurantism, against all forms of fundamentalism, " he concluded.
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