In a very controversial column written by one of the founders of the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo,” the 80-year-old criticized and blamed Stéphane Charbonnier for the terrorist attacks that claimed 10 lives in Paris. Carbonnier was one of the editors of the magazine who pushed for the offensive cartoons to be published.
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Henri Roussel, an 80-year-old who contributed to its first issue, in 1970 (when it was known as Hara-Kiri Hebdo), penned a column this week criticizing editor Stéphane Charbonnier, one of five staff members killed in last week’s shootings, for his stubbornness after publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, which was followed by the 2011 firebombing of the newspaper’s offices.
“What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it?” Roussel writes in Nouvel Observateur, according to a translation by the Telegraph. “He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012.”
“I believe that we [were] fools who took an unnecessary risk,” Roussel, who writes under the pen name Delfeil de Ton, continued. “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.
“I know it’s not done,” Roussel, who called Charbonnier a “blockhead,” added. “[But] I really hold it against you.”
It’s pretty awful to blame the victim of terrorist attacks, but the old guy might just be grieving for the friends he lost in the attack. still, he could have waited for a few weeks to smear the memory of Hebdo’s murdered editor.