'Charlie Hebdo' alarm still ringing 3 months later
PARIS — Three months after brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, the alarm is still sounding — literally.
"It's a crime scene. We're not allowed to go in there to turn it off, " said Paul Moreira, a journalist and documentary maker who runs Premières Lignes, a TV production company. It is situated across the hall from where editor Stéphane Charbonnier, four cartoonists, the building's caretaker and six others were massacred Jan. 7 in the worst terrorist attack on French soil in modern times.
Moreira, 53, is a well-known investigative journalist who has reported from some of the world's most dangerous trouble spots, from Somalia to Syria. His employees were the first to attend to Charlie Hebdo's dead, injured and dying.
"I have seen many dead bodies in places like Iraq, but seeing it (death) right there on my doorstep just didn't match with my previous experiences," he said.
The alarm he is not permitted to turn off sits inside the small, street-level room occupied by caretaker Frederic Boisseau, who was shot dead by the Kouachis after they asked him how to find the offices of the newspaper they believed had offended Islam.
Only minutes before, the pair had burst through the wrong door of the building in one of Paris' most densely populated districts.
"I hope one day they will shut it off, because it's kind of strange," said Moreira, reflecting on the constant drone that has greeted him each day since Premières Lignes moved back into the building a week after the massacre. The sound is not a high-pitched squeal suggesting an emergency, but a low hum.
"Every day they are waiting for the enemy that may never come," Moreira said. "But every day they are prepared for it."
Since the attacks, Charlie Hebdo has moved to office space provided by the left-leaning newspaper Liberation.
Moreira said military police in bullet-proof vests and carrying machine guns still patrol the hallways of the newspaper's former location around the clock. Last Friday, they were stationed outside because the building's interior was being painted.
