Charlie Hebdo survivor says gunmen ‘shouted Allahu Akbar then shot me’

From the Sydney Morning Herald

Paris: A survivor of the 2015 attack on satirical publication Charlie Hebdo has told a French court how the gunmen said “Allahu akbar” (“God is greatest”), then shot him with their Kalashnikov rifles.

Simon Fieschi was the first employee the two gunmen encountered when they entered the newspaper’s Paris offices. He said that after being shot he lost consciousness, and the gunmen moved on to other targets.

“It was all very quick for me,” said Fieschi, 36, who limped to the witness box using a crutch but declined an offer to take a seat, saying he preferred to testify standing. “I remember the door opening violently, and gunshots. I remember a man who said: ‘Allahu akbar,’ and then, ‘We don’t kill women’,” said Fieschi, who was in charge of the publication’s digital platforms.

“I lost consciousness, which is without doubt what saved my life,” he said. One bullet went into his neck and damaged his spinal column, leaving him with constant pain and reduced mobility. On the day of the attack, when Fieschi regained consciousness the shooting had already finished and many of his colleagues lay dead or wounded. It was not until much later that he was told what had happened to his co-workers.

“The image that stays with me is of a trail of blood in the corridor leading to the newsroom,” he said in court. “At the time I didn’t really understand what it meant.”