A rally of defiance and sorrow, protected by an unparalleled level of security, on Sunday will honour the 17 victims of three days of bloodshed in Paris that left France on alert for more violence.
Unity against extremism is the rallying cry for the hundreds of thousands expected to attend the gathering at France’s enormous Republique plaza, including Canada’s Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and dozens of other world leaders.
It’s “being billed as near unprecedented showing of international solidarity,” the CBC’s Jeff Semple reported from Paris.
Hours before the march, a video appeared online apparently made by one of the gunman before he took hostages at a Jewish supermarket on Friday, killing four before he himself was killed by police. He sat wearing white robes, a gun by his side.
He pledged allegiance to ISIS insurgent group and urged French Muslims to follow his example. A French anti-terrorist police source confirmed it was the killer, Amedy Coulibaly, speaking before the action.
“What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are doing,” Coulibaly told the camera in fluent French. “You cannot attack and not expect retribution so you are playing the victim as if you don’t understand what’s happening.”
#ISIS releases video of Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly pledging allegiance to its leader. (Via @siteintelgroup) #CBC pic.twitter.com/NZ8VVF3gu8
— Derek Stoffel (@DerekStoffelCBC) January 11, 2015
Coulibaly’s widow, who has been named as an accomplice, is believed to have travelled to a Turkish city near the Syrian border and then all traces of her were lost, according to a Turkish intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Meanwhile, a French prosecutor said Sunday a shooting of a jogger in a Paris suburb on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre has been linked to Coulibaly.
In a brief statement, the prosecutor said ballistics tests on shell cases from the shooting Wednesday in Fontenay aux Roses linked them to the automatic weapon at the kosher store stormed two days later. The prosecutor said the jogger was seriously wounded.
Some 2,200 police and soldiers patrolled Paris streets to protect marchers from would-be attackers, with police snipers on rooftops and plain-clothes detectives mingling with the crowd. City sewers were searched ahead of the vigil and underground train stations around the march route are due to be closed down.
The silent march, starting at 9 a.m. ET, reflects shock over the worst militant Islamist assault on a European city in nine years. For France, it raised questions of free speech, religion and security, and beyond French frontiers it exposed the vulnerability of states to urban attacks.
An Elysee official quoted President Francois Hollande as telling his ministers: “Paris is today the capital of the world. Our entire country will rise up and show its best side.”
At a meeting of international interior ministers in Paris, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the White House will host a high-level summit on countering violent extremism on Feb. 18.
5 detained released from custody
The three days of terror began Wednesday when a pair of masked gunmen stormed the newsroom of the satirical newspaper, killing 12 people. Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen said it directed the attack to avenge the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly’s satire. On Thursday, a separate gunman, Coulibaly, killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and on Friday, the attackers converged.
A placard with a news cartoon is placed amongst other tributes on the statues at the Place de la Republique in Paris. (Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)
With the brothers who stormed Charlie Hebdo holed up in a printing plant near Charles de Gaulle airport, Coulibaly seized hostages inside a kosher market. It all ended at dusk Friday with near-simultaneous raids at the printing plant and the market that left all three gunmen dead. Four hostages at the market were also killed.
Five people detained in connection with the three days of bloodshed in France were released from custody, the Paris prosecutor’s spokeswoman said earlier Sunday. Family members of the attackers have been given preliminary charges, but prosecutor’s spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said no one remained in detention Sunday over the attacks.
“I hope that at the end of the day everyone is united. Everyone, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists,” said Zakaria Moumni, who was at Republique early Sunday. “We are humans first of all. And nobody deserves to be murdered like that. Nobody.”
It was France’s deadliest terrorist attack in decades, and the country remains on high alert while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network.
“On Twitter, people are using the hashtag #ParisIsBurning,” said the CBC’s Semple, adding that the military and police presence are on guard to keep that from happening.
“It’s not the end for us, it’s not the end,” said Christophe Crepin, spokesman for UNSA police union. “I think we have turned a page, a bit like before Sept. 11 and after Sept. 11.”
At an international conference in India, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France.
“And we stand together not just in anger and in outrage, but in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: freedom,” Kerry said.
