The Charlie Hebdo app features the so-called “survivor’s issue” of the satirical magazine, which sold out within minutes in France and across Europe this week. Versions are available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Once downloaded, users can purchase the latest edition for $2.99.
Twelve people, including several of France’s most famous cartoonists, were massacred at Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office last week by gunmen who claimed the attack was retribution for the magazine’s notorious cartoon caricatures of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
Thousands of people waited outside newsstands on Wednesday — some lining up before dawn — to buy the new issue in a show of solidarity with the surviving members of Charlie Hebdo’s staff.
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Charlie Hebdo journalist Laurent Leger — who survived last week’s deadly attack — defended the magazine at the time, saying the cartoons were not intended to provoke anger or violence.
“The aim is to laugh,” Leger told BFM-TV in 2012. “We want to laugh at the extremists — every extremist. They can be Muslim, Jewish, Catholic. Everyone can be religious, but extremist thoughts and acts we cannot accept.”
“In France, we always have the right to write and draw. And if some people are not happy with this, they can sue us and we can defend ourselves. That’s democracy,” Leger said. “You don’t throw bombs, you discuss, you debate. But you don’t act violently. We have to stand and resist pressure from extremism.”
