Charlie Hebdo co-founder says murdered editor 'dragged team' to their deaths

Calling editor Stéphane Charbonnieran an 'amazing lad', co-founder says he was also a stubborn 'block head'

One of the founders of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was the scene of a massacre last week in Paris, has accused its editor of “dragging the team” to death by publishing provocative cartoons of Prophet Mohammed (pbuh).

According to The Telegraph, Henri Roussel, 80, who contributed to the first issue in 1970, had written to editor Stéphane Charbonnier against the sacrilegious drawings. “I really hold it against you,” he had said.

Charbonnier, who went by the name Charb, was among the cartoonists killed by masked gunmen during the attack at the magazine.

Referring to the editor’s decision to print a drawing of Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) on the front cover in 2011, the co-founder – who published under the pen name Delfeil de Ton – questioned in this week's French magazine Nouvel Obs, “What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it?”

Calling Charb an “amazing lad”, he said he was also a stubborn “block head”.

The cover of the magazine in 2011 consisted of a sacrilegious drawing and soon afterwards, the magazine’s offices were burned down in a firebomb attack by arsonists who have not been identified.

“He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012.”

“I believe that we are fools who took an unnecessary risk. That’s it. We think we are invulnerable. For years, decades even, it was a provocation and then one day the provocation turns against us,” Roussel added.

A year later in 2012, after the firebomb attacks, cartoons of the Prophet were printed again. But resolute following the recent attack, for their “survivor issue” released yesterday, Charlie Hebdo published a picture of the Prophet (pbuh) on the cover, extending its print run to five million copies from the normal number of around 60,000.

Roussel’s statements angered Charlie Hebdo lawyer Richard Malka.

“Charb has not yet even been buried and Obs finds nothing better to do that to publish a polemical and venomous piece on him,” the lawyer, who has worked with the publication for the past 22 years, told one of the owners of Nouvel Obs and Le Monde,

“The other day, the editor of Nouvel Obs, Matthieu Croissandeau, couldn’t shed enough tears to say he would continue the fight. I didn’t know he meant it this way. I refuse to allow myself to be invaded by bad thoughts, but my disappointment is immense,” Malka said.

Meanwhile, the Nouvel Obs editor said, “We received this text and after a debate I decided to publish it in an edition on freedom of expression, it would have seemed to me worrisome to have censored his voice, even if it is discordant. Particularly as this is the voice of one of the pioneers of the gang.”