“There are scars that never close.” Simon Fieschi, responsible for the Charlie Hebdo website at the time of the attack in January 2015, died at the age of 40, almost ten years after the jihadist attack against the satirical weekly, in which he was seriously injured.
The Paris Prosecutor’s Office has announced the opening of an investigation into the causes of his death, but does not rule out any hypothesis at the moment, although his lifeless body was found this week in a hotel room.
“Contrary to what some media outlets have published, at this stage of the investigation there is no evidence in favor of a deliberate act, and the cause of death remains unknown,” stressed lawyer Nathalie Senyk, calling “for “Everyone to be especially vigilant before the final result of the investigation.”
Serious consequences
This father of one, married to an Australian, was the first injured in the jihadist attack against the offices of Charlie Hebdo, where he subsequently continued working part-time.
Using a crutch, he recently appeared at the trial of Peter Cherif, sentenced to life in prison for his role in organizing the attack on the Kouachi brothers.
Unlike the other civil parties, he said he had been given “all the answers” he wanted during the hearings, despite the defendant’s silence about his exact role with the attackers, almost ten years after the event.
In 2020, during the first trial for this attack, Fieschi, who lost seven centimeters from his waist as a result of a Kalashnikov bullet fired from close range into his spine, spoke about life afterward, despite having spent nine months hospitalized after the attack. .
«The pain is for life. “You can’t get rid of it (…) From now on, I have to do rehabilitation work for the rest of my life,” he declared before the Special Court of First Instance in Paris.
“It is a psychological effort every day, an abysmal fatigue,” he continued, also referring to the “tremors” in his legs, the “loss of motor skills,” the “difficulty concentrating” and the “episodes of sadness and anger.”
“Survivor’s guilt”
After wanting a career in the gendarmerie when he was a teenager, he joined Charlie Hebdo in 2012 to “take care of the website and social networks”, according to his biography published on the weekly’s website.
Described as an admirer of musician Keith Jarret, comic book hero Gaston Lagaffe and philosopher Emil Cioran, he also spoke in schools to share his story.
In front of high school students, he said he felt “guilty for having survived.” «I dealt with it differently because I was hurt. I felt like I had paid the price. We often see a reversal of blame: it is as if the fault lies with the person who takes the bullet and not with the person who fired it. They attacked us for what we did: didn’t we look for it a little? At the trial, the innocent feel bad and those who do not feel guilty are in the dock,” he had declared, according to statements transcribed on the website of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism.
After the announcement of his death, numerous reactions took place on social networks to salute his memory. The editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo declared themselves “devastated by the death of” their “friend”, described as “funny, lively and a tireless defender of freedom”, in a message on X.
«Simon Fieschi fought to overcome the horror of which he was one of the victims. There are scars that many no longer see, but that will never close,” François Hollande, president of the French Republic at the time of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, wrote on the same network.
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