News Digest

#CharlieHebdo attacker buried in secret as protests rage

Officials in a city east of Paris have said one of the brothers who carried out the massacre at the office of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo has been buried in the town of Reims, despite objections from local authorities. The mayor told French television that Said Kouachi was buried quietly on Wednesday night after the French government enforced a law that grants people the right to be buried in their last town of residence. Kouachi lived in the city before he was killed along with his brother on January 9 following a standoff with police. Earlier in the week the mayor of Reims said he would “categorically refuse” a request by Kouachi’s family to bury him in the city, out of concern that the grave could become a shrine for “extremists”. Kouachi’s younger brother Cherif is to be buried in an anonymous grave in another town outside Paris, AP news agency reported.

Every time we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time we draw a cartoon of prophets, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion.

Charlie Hebdo chief editor Gerard Biard, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme.

Meanwhile, five people were killed and churches set on fire in Niger in fresh anti-Charlie Hebdo protests. Anger mounted in several Muslim countries over the satirical newspaper’s caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, with a second day of rioting erupting in Niger, a predominantly Muslim former French colony. Around 1,000 youths wielding iron bars, clubs and axes rampaged through the Niger capital, hurling rocks at police who responded with tear gas. At least eight churches were torched and the French embassy in Niamey urged its citizens to stay at home. Some 15,000 people also rallied in Russia’s Muslim North Caucasus region of Ingushetia against Charlie Hebdo, which depicted on its most recent cover a weeping Mohammed holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign. There were also protests in Pakistan on Friday, and in Gaza the French cultural centre was defaced with graffiti, reading: “You will go to hell, French journalists”.