The magazine was hacked in early January after it published a series of cartoons that negatively depicted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The caricatures were part of a media campaign that Charlie Hebdo said was intended to support anti-government protests in the Islamic nation.

Representatives for the Iranian and French governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A press officer for Charlie Hebdo said the magazine had no comment on the matter “for the moment.”

Iran publicly vowed an “effective response” to the “insulting” cartoons, and summoned the French envoy in Tehran, while also ending activities of the French Institute of Research in Iran and saying it was re-evaluating France’s cultural activities in the country.

The hack-and-leak targeting Charlie Hebdo was part of a wider digital influence operation with techniques matching previously identified activity linked to Iranian state-backed hacking teams, Microsoft researchers said in a report. The group responsible is the same one that U.S. Department of Justice officials earlier identified as having conducted a “multi-faceted campaign” to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Microsoft said. Iran denied the claims at the time.

Amid Iran’s criticism of the Khamenei cartoons, a group of hackers calling itself “Holy Souls” posted on an online forum that they had access to the names and contact details of more than 200,000 Charlie Hebdo subscribers. In their post, they said they would sell the information for 20 bitcoins ($470,000).

A sample of the leaked data was later released and verified as authentic by the French newspaper Le Monde.

“This information, obtained by the Iranian actor, could put the magazine’s subscribers at risk for online or physical targeting by extremist organizations,” the Microsoft researchers said.

To amplify their operation, the Iranian hackers used Twitter accounts with fake or stolen identities to criticize the Khamenei cartoons. Two accounts impersonating a Charlie Hebdo editor and a technology executive also posted the leaked data before Twitter banned them, Microsoft said.

Twitter’s press team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lawyer Al-Otaibi had decided to start the trial procedures when the French magazine republished the cartoons in September 2020, and a team of European lawyers are currently assisting him to prepare the case sheet and submit it to the French court in the coming weeks.

The derogatory cartoons of the Prophet sparked outrage in various Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia. Kingdom strongly condemned the heinous act, and stated that, freedom of expression is a moral value that promotes respect and coexistence among people, and it’s not the tool for spreading hatred to cause cultural and civilizational clashes.

Regarding the delay in the process to file the case, Al-Otaibi said that, “the intention to sue the magazine was in place since the magazine dared to publish the caricature, but a little wait was made due to the preparation to study the case well, and to assemble a legal team that shares the same goals”.

“We made agreement with European lawyers who converted to Islam, and they share the same goal with us, and feel angry at what was published against the Prophet”, Al-Otaibi added,

He further said, “The prosecution of the French magazine will take a short period of time, and an effort is not easy, and it may require moving from court to court, but we insist on continuing this blessed path until this magazine stops and is held accountable for insulting the Prophet of such a big community”.

Al-Otaibi plans to first approach French judiciary, which will serve as the channel to approach European Court of Human Rights. This is because, the French laws do not serve the purpose to criminalize the mockery of religions and the religious figures, while European Court does.

Charlie Hebdo is infamous for its satirical content against all religions including Judaism and Catholicism. But it was the caricatures of Islam’s Prophet which drew global condemnation for misusing freedom of expression.

The principle of laïcité, as expressed by Charlie Hebdo’s editor, is not compatible with a human rights approach that respects individual freedoms, including freedom of religion…

Once again, the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo republish controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The aim to mark the start of a trial of suspected accomplices of the terrorist gunman who attacked Charlie Hebdo offices in January 2015 but turns out its sparking anger across the Islamic world. 

Charlie Hebdo is a satirical weekly magazine that is published in France, which is self-defining as a “secular, political and jubilant” periodical that “draws, writes, interviews, ponders and laughs at everything on this earth, which is ridiculous, giggles at all that is absurd or preposterous in life”. The cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were first published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005. These were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2006. 

Widely reported across global media, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons have been variously interpreted as contentious provocations toward Islam which disregard iconographic norms and thereby ride roughshod over Muslim cultural sensitivities, and/or for depicting Islam in crude, stereotypical, and offensive style. In contrast, other commentators have applauded the magazine, by viewing these cartoons as the expression of universal civic rights of free speech, secularism, and equality.

Laïcité is France’s principle of secularism which means the State and religious organizations are separate. In France, freedom of expression is considered a universal right, while in some countries, even in Israel does not allow offending religious sentiments. The law prohibits illustrating Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed in a way that would hurt the feelings of believers. To the French, this also seems strange because laws limiting freedom of speech were taken off the books at the end of the 18th century.

President Emmanuel Macron said, “There is in France a freedom to blaspheme which is attached to the freedom of conscience. I am here to protect all these freedoms. In France, one can criticize a president and governors”.

The response to the Charlie Hebdo attack has raised the need to better define and articulate what we mean by freedom of expression. Several fundamental misconceptions and blind spots in the discussion on freedom of speech and its limitations have been exposed and require clarification or refutation.

The idea of extending anti-vilification laws to cover religious groups runs into conflict with an extremist view of laïcité. This view sees the principle of laïcité not as a separation between religion and state, but as state-endorsed secularism. Previously, Gérard Biard as Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, said in 2012 that Charlie Hebdo was an atheist paper, a secularist paper”. He argues that people should recognize that laïcité is perhaps the prime moral value of our Republic and without it, Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité isn’t possible.

French sociologist and political scientist, Vincent Geisser, explained that Charlie Hebdo is only looking to impose its secular purity by treating everyone else as fanatics”. Charlie Hebdo’s satirizing of Islam in the name of their view of laïcité is, thus, a part of a very real attack not only on religion as an institution but also on people’s right to religious freedom. 

Geisser’s argument can understand that laïcité stands in direct contradiction to the idea of freedom of religion expressed in The United Nations which is recognized under the importance of freedom of religion or belief in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration), Article 18 which states that “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. This right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his [her] choice”.

Qur’an strictly prohibits images of Prophet Mohammed. However, Mohammed is a venerated figure among Muslims, who often perceive cartoons and other material critical of him as an attack on their Muslim identity. Hence, the principle of laïcité, as expressed by Charlie Hebdo’s editor, is not compatible with a human rights approach that respects individual freedoms, including freedom of religion. The incompatibility should be more obvious; the fact that it is not pointing to a shortcoming in approach to anti-vilification principles.

The purpose of laws against vilification is to protect the human dignity of individuals. On this basis, criticism of a religious belief must be permitted, but interference with an individual’s right to hold a belief, or to practice their religion, can be prohibited. The distinction can be seen by considering its application to cartoons of Mohammed in more detail.

In general, Freedom of speech is presented as the most significant Western value and the heart of democracy. To sum up, it is a reminder that secular Europeans have their own identity politics, and that these play out in controversies over cartoons, as well. However, insulting Muslims, offending their religious feelings, and vilifying Islam are not just words; it might trigger emotions of extreme dislike, which eventually leads to another conflict. The key is to respect others to get respected. Treat people with respect if you want to be respected.

Try Ananto Wicaksono is a student with two master’s degrees programs in Business Law and Public Policy from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP) – Indonesia respectively. He also Alumni of Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) School of Political Economy (ISPE) Batch 2020. His interest in International Political Economy, International Economic Law and Human Rights.

Khamenei never mentions the daily occurrences of such levels of violence by the security forces in Iran.

The French teacher Samuel Patty could surely not have known what fate awaited him when he showed a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, to his students. The cartoon had previously been published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Samuel Patty could not have imagined how different groups of people would react to his actions according to their own perspective. This incident provoked a lot of anger and hatred in the world.

According to the global news agency, AFP, the killer, the perpetrator of the brutal beheading of Samuel Patty, was a young man, a lone individual, influenced by Islamic fundamentalism and attracted to such groups.

As expected, in Iran, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, tried to score political points from this barbaric act. On the one hand, he did not want to lag behind other Muslim countries’ leaders in making a statement. On the other hand, he tried to elaborate on this event and exaggerate aspects of it to deflect attention from the suppression apparatus inside Iran. 

In his message to the youths of France, he made no mention of the brutal murder of the French teacher, rather advised the youths to question the president of their country and require accountability from him for “double standards of freedom of expression”, for condoning the showing of the cartoon.

The irony is that no one has the right to object or criticize the supreme leader in Iran. Those who criticize or question his actions in any form are subjected to severe persecution, torture, and long prison terms. Following Khamenei’s message, other regime leaders also tried to take advantage of this opportunity to cover up their crimes by magnifying foreign events, trying to occupy the people’s minds for a while, distracting them from the problems they face on a daily basis.

A while ago, when a black man named George Floyd was shot dead by police in the United States, Khamenei took advantage of the situation and said: “they kill people easily and claim respect for human rights and do not even apologize.”

The issuance of such statements by the Iranian authorities coincides with the “Week of the Police Force” in Iran and the anniversary of the nationwide protests of November 2019. This peaceful protest resulted in the killing of 1,500 people and the arrest of more than 12,000 others. The brutal crackdown of the peaceful demonstrations of November 2019 became public to the world’s eyes via different social media platforms.

At first, a young man named Mehrdad Sepehri was brutally beaten by the police and killed on the way to the detention center. Marks of torture on various parts of his body could clearly be seen. With the release of videos of this crime, the local officials of the judiciary and law enforcement announced that to calm down the current unrest situation, the “offending officer” was arrested by the military prosecutor and two other officers who transferred the “victim” to the police station have been under investigation.

Of course, this was just a claim, and no investigation or follow-up action was ordered or conducted. This is typical of the vast majority of similar cases, where no official or individual is charged and the files are closed in a hasty fashion.

Another witness to the brutal crackdown of the November 2019 peaceful protests made a short clip of the beating, shooting, and killing of another young man named Mohsen Minbashi by IRGC plainclothes forces. The clip is filming the sidewalk of one of the streets of Esfarayen city in Khorasan province, showing that security forces brutally shot a young man who had fallen to the ground. He was severely beaten with a stick, then shot at close range with a shotgun and for him, life ended.

Another video from the city of Abadan shows the brutal attack on a young woman who fell to the ground and was covered in blood and became unconscious. 

Another clip shows police in the city of Ahwaz,  beating and humiliating two young people.

The above are descriptions of just a few of the clips taken by people who happened to be at the scene and their public release has angered people all over Iran.

Undoubtedly, many more tortures, killing, and deaths were not captured on camera, or documented, and any possible evidence has been destroyed.
In the city of Najafabad, the regime’s thugs staged a demonstration protesting a girl riding a bicycle in the streets. 

The girl was arrested and imprisoned. Her sin was riding a bicycle in public. Later on, the thugs staged another protest against her in another part of the city.

The presence of suppressive forces in Iran and the implementation of strict policies are taking a turn for the worse every day. A number of the Iranian authorities have spoken out, pointing to the changes over time of such repressive measures.

Khamenei never mentions the daily occurrences of such levels of violence by the security forces in Iran. In fact, he advises his thugs to implement harsh measures of violence on the streets of Iran. Look at the irony, a woman rides a bicycle in public in Iran and is prosecuted, while the security forces kill innocent people in the street and are never prosecuted.

If innocent bystanders can be murdered freely in Iran by the security forces, one can only imagine the harshness and brutality the prisoners go through in Iran’s prisons. Unimaginable!

Hassan Mahmoudi is a Europe-based social analyst, researcher, independent observer, and commentator of Middle Eastern and Iranian Politics. He tweets under @hassan_mahmou1.