Satirical paper ‘firebombed’ after Mohammed cartoon

The offices of a French satirical newspaper that published a special Arab Spring edition with the Prophet Mohammed on the cover as “guest editor” were destroyed in a suspected firebomb attack yesterday.

The attack came after Charlie Hebdo renamed the weekly newspaper Charia (Sharia) Hebdo for the occasion and featured a front-page cartoon of the prophet saying: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!”

The newspaper’s website also appeared to have been hacked, with its regular home page replaced with a photo of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and a message reading: “No god but Allah”. The web site was later unavailable.

French officials were quick to denounce the attack.

“Freedom of expression is an inalienable right in our democracy and all attacks on the freedom of the press must be condemned with the greatest firmness. No cause can justify such an act of violence,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said in a statement.

“Of course everything will be done to find the perpetrators of this attack, and this must certainly be called an attack,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant told journalists at the scene.

Police said the fire at the newspaper’s offices in eastern Paris started around 1 a.m. (0200 GMT). No one was injured in the blaze, which a police source said was suspected to have been caused by a petrol bomb.

The magazine’s publisher, known only as Charb, said he was convinced the fire was linked to the special edition.

“On Twitter, on Facebook, we received several letters of protest, threats, insults,” which had been forwarded to the police, he said.

“This is the first time we have been physically attacked, but we won’t let it get to us.”