A Pakistani national has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to murder two people back in 2020 using a meat cleaver at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, multiple media outlets reported on Friday.
The perpetrator of the attack, Zaheer Mahmood, 29, reportedly planned an attack on the office of the satirical weekly magazine – not realizing it had moved locations following a prior terror attack.
Mahmood reportedly continued on with the attack despite the office not containing his intended targets.
He seriously wounded two employees belonging to the Premieres Lignes news agency. Neither employee accepted his pleas for forgiveness, according to BBC News.
The office switch was due to terrorists having killed 12 of the magazine’s staff a decade ago in an al-Qaeda-linked attack.
Five other Pakistani nationals were also jailed for supporting Mahmood, but their trial was held in a Paris juvenile court due to them being minors at the time of their arrest.
Stabbing motivated by satirical cartoons of Prophet Muhammad
The stabbing that had occurred five years ago happened after Charlie Hebdo republished satirical cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, with DW News describing the incident as an “Islamist-motivated attack.”
After he’s served his three decades in prison, he will be banned from France, according to the BBC. The DW report also cited Mahmood’s lawyer saying that he entered France illegally a year before he committed the attack, but the BBC report stated that he had arrived in France in 2017.
Mahmood’s lawyer also said that his client was radicalized by a preacher who urged his followers to “avenge the Prophet,” and that his actions were due to the disconnection he had from French society after leaving his native Pakistan, DW reported.
The Paris court was told that Mahmood also planned the attack to mark five years since the al-Qaeda-linked attack.