On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, ten months before the brutal terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, two radicalized Islamist brothers, Said and Chérif Kouachi, burst into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where the publication's weekly editorial meeting was drawing to a close. The brothers murdered a total of 11 people at the offices: cartoonists, journalists, a bodyguard and a janitor. They then murdered a 12th - a Muslim police officer - in the chase that followed. One year after the attack, PARIS TERROR ATTACK: CHARLIE HEBDO, premieres on Monday, January 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel. It follows, hour by hour, the event that foreshadowed the worst terrorist attack in France in over 50 years.
With powerful testimony from the police and military commanders leading the operation to capture the suspects, combined with chilling eyewitness video, PARIS TERROR ATTACK: CHARLIE HEBDO recounts in detail the three days of horror amid France's biggest-ever manhunt. Among the interviewees are Hebdo staffer Dr. Patrick Pelloux, who would have been in the office that morning but had a meeting in the city; Maryse, widow of Georges Wolinski, Charlie Hebdo's lead cartoonist; Michel Catalano, the owner of the sign-making and printing factory north of Paris where the Kouachis eventually holed up; and two survivors of the siege on a kosher grocery story in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris.
In the minutes following the massacre, the terrorists claimed they had "avenged the Prophet Mohammed" and "killed Charlie Hebdo" for a series of cartoons that featured the founder of Islam. Police tracked the killers as they made their escape through Paris, heading north. But, 30 minutes after the attack, the police lost sight of them. During the three-day manhunt that followed, French police and counter-terrorism officers tracked the Kouachis to a sign-making and printing factory north of the capital.
Meanwhile, the Kouachis' associate, Amedy Coulibaly, murdered another police officer, then took 19 customers hostage at a kosher grocery store, killing four of them. The Kouachis and Coulibaly told their
HOSTAGES that they intended to die as martyrs. In telephone conversations with French television and radio, the Kouachis confirmed that they had been financed by the notorious Al-Qaeda preacher, Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, while Coulibaly revealed that he and the brothers were working in association with each other. Both sieges were brought to a bloody conclusion late on that Friday evening. The three terrorists were killed, while the remaining
HOSTAGES in the grocery store and the factory were rescued.
PARIS TERROR ATTACK: CHARLIE HEBDO is produced by Films of Records Ltd for Smithsonian Networks in association with Channel 4 Television. The Producer/Director was Ursula Macfarlane, with Executive Producer Neil Grant. David Royle and Charles Poe serve as executive producers for Smithsonian Channel.
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