Charlie Hebdo struggles with aftermath of attacks

Meanwhile, staff resolutely work on in a heavily protected temporary office on a floor of the French daily, Libération, coming to work between flashbacks and psychotherapy appointments, comforting the relatives of the dead and visiting the three survivors who are still in hospital being treated for horrific injuries. In a small team of about 20 people, the slightest spat now plays out in public under a full media spotlight – including staff demands to turn the paper into a co-operative and criticisms of management’s treatment of those suffering the fallout of death threats and grief.

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“The atmosphere is appalling,” one journalist says. But all acknowledge that each Wednesday morning on the attack’s anniversary they manage to sit around the editorial conference table, put bad feeling aside, and come up with a good paper.

“The most important thing is there’s a real desire to keep getting this paper out every week, it should continue and it will continue,” says Riss (real name: Laurent Sourisseau). “Yes, we’re in a very peculiar situation, but you just mustn’t think about it too much. The fact that everyone is watching across the world spurs us on to keep going, helps us not be scared.” Under fatwa himself after 20 years at Charlie Hebdo, there were reports this week that police had questioned two suspects for photographing the building where he lives. On the day of the January attack, he ducked while the others stayed standing, a bullet shattered his shoulder-blade – likened by doctors to “a plate smashed against the ground” – and he was left haunted by watching his friends being gunned down. In hospital, he thought the gunmen would come back to find him and finish him off. “Everyone handles it differently,” he says. “Physically, I’m better than I have been.”

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