PARIS — The suspect in the stabbing of two people outside the former Paris office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has confessed and said his attack was directed at the publication because it printed cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a French judicial official said on Saturday. Charlie Hebdo’s former office was the target of a January 2015 terrorist attack that killed 12 people after the weekly first published the cartoons. It republished them in early September on the opening day of the trial of 14 people suspected of having links to the 2015 attack. The stabbing took place during the long-awaited trial of alleged accomplices in the 2015 attack, which has forced France to relive the trauma of a series of terrorist strikes in the past few years. French authorities have said that the suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack on Friday, is an 18-year-old Pakistani man who arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor.

Source: New York Times September 26, 2020 19:18 UTC