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Paris shootings survivor sues French media for 'putting his life in danger' Paris shootings survivor sues French media for 'putting his life in danger'
(about 7 hours later)
A man who hid in a cupboard for eight hours to escape the Charlie Hebdo gunmen is suing television and radio stations, accusing them of having put his life in danger during the attacks in Paris. A graphic designer who hid under a sink for eight hours to escape the Charlie Hebdo gunmen is suing French television and radio stations, accusing them of putting his life in danger by revealing his presence.
Related: Charlie Hebdo attack vigils – in pictures On 9 January, two days after Saïd and Chérif Kouachi killed 12 people in an attack on the magazine’s offices, they arrived heavily armed at a small printing firm on a quiet industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële outside Paris, on the run from police.
The Paris prosecutors’ office confirmed it had opened an investigation after Lilian Lepere said media coverage had risked his safety as he hid from brothers Chérif Kouachi and Saïd Kouachi in January. When the print firm’s boss first spotted them outside, he turned and told his 26-year-old employee, graphic designer Lilian Lepère, to hide.
Seventeen people were killed in the Islamic extremist attacks around Paris that began with an assault on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and ended with police raids on a printing plant and a kosher supermarket where hostages were being held. The three attackers – the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly – also died. While his boss chatted to the men, offered them coffee and bandaged a superficial flesh wound, Lepère squeezed into a tiny cupboard under a sink and hid there in the foetal position for more than eight hours.
At the printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, north of Paris, hostage Lilian Lepere was hiding in a cupboard under a sink, apparently unknown to the two gunmen there, when at least three television and radio stations revealed his possible presence.
He was eventually released unharmed.
Lepere’s lawyer, Antoine Casubolo Ferro, said the complaint aims to increase media awareness of life-threatening situations. “Delivering information without careful consideration may lead to endanger other’s lives. Journalists must think of it,” he said.
On 9 January, as police surrounded the printing plant, lawmaker Yves Albarello revealed on radio station RMC that an employee was still hiding inside the building.
Later, Lepere’s sister Cindy confirmed in an interview to public television station France 2 that she believed her brother to be in the plant and that the family had stopped calling him in order to not compromise his hiding place.
A journalist from TF1 television also reported the information.
Related: The graphic designer who texted vital information to police from his hiding placeRelated: The graphic designer who texted vital information to police from his hiding place
Lepere hid under a sink in the building after the Kouachi brothers – who two days earlier had killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices – burst into the shop and locked themselves in. Afraid to move in case the gunmen heard him, it took a long time until he could ease his phone out of his pocket and send text messages to relatives to call the police. From his hiding place, he stayed in contact with officers by phone for hours.
His employer was initially taken hostage, but was later released. Lepere remained in hiding until the Kouachis were gunned down by special forces. But while he was concealing himself, the TV stations France 2 and TF1 and RMC radio revealed that someone was hiding in the printing shop. RMC interviewed Yves Albarello, the MP for the area, who made the revelation.
The prosecutors’ probe is into TF1 and France 2 television stations, as well as RMC radio, all of which revealed Lepere’s situation. French prosecutors are investigating whether the media endangered Lepère’s life. Lepère escaped when police stormed the building and killed the gunmen. Afterwards, he described having heard the attackers looking around the kitchen where he was hiding. “One of them opened the cupboard right next to mine in which there wasn’t anything interesting. It was 50cm away. I said to myself, ‘they’re going to look in everything,’” he told France 2.
This is not the first time that French media have been criticised for the way they covered the attacks. In February, France’s broadcasting watchdog issued formal warnings to 16 television and radio stations for serious “breaches” in their coverage. One of the attackers drank from the sink. “I heard the water running above my head because my head was pushed against the sink. I saw his shadow through the tiny crack of light in the door … it was a surreal moment. I thought it was like a film.”
The watchdog agency, known as CSA, accused the stations of putting the lives of hostages in danger and reprimanded two stations for broadcasting images of the gunmen shooting a policeman in the head outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Another investigation has been launched after a separate complaint by several people who hid in a basement fridge of the Paris kosher supermarket, which was attacked on the same day by another gunman, Amédy Coulibaly, who shot dead four people and held others hostage.
Warnings were also issued for identifying the two gunmen despite official requests not to do so. When Coulibaly burst into the supermarket with a Kalashnikov, many of the shoppers fled downstairs to a storeroom. The gunman sent a shopworker downstairs to ask them to come back or everyone would be shot. Some, including a man and his three-year-old son went back upstairs, others resolutely stayed downstairs.
The regulator also slammed the live video feeds of the police assault on the kosher supermarket where Coulibaly killed four people and took others hostage. A group of people, including a mother and baby, hid behind cardboard boxes in a fridge. They stayed on their knees, thinking that if Coulibaly came for them he would shoot at chest height and they’d escape. During their four-hour wait, while keeping the baby quiet with keys and other objects to play with, they sent text messages to relatives and the police.
BFM TV was also censured for reporting that someone was hiding in the supermarket during the siege, and prosecutors have already launched a probe into this, after the former hostages accused the television network of putting their lives in danger. In the middle of the hostage-taking, while the group was still hiding, a reporter on the BFMTV rolling-news channel announced: “There’s a person, a woman, who might have been hiding from the start in the fridge. And who is probably still there.”
In the UK, Sky News avoided censure for showing a clip of the murder of a police officer during the Charlie Hebdo attack, after an investigation by the broadcast media regulator in April cleared the graphic footage. The group told the daily Libération that they had complained “so this never happens to anyone else”.
Sky News, which aired the amateur footage repeatedly on the day of the attack, showed the police officer – later named as Ahmed Merabet – being shot, but edited out the final seconds when he receives a second shot to the head. In February, the French broadcast regulator formally censured several major TV and radio networks for serious breaches in their coverage of the attacks, which left 17 people dead.
The officer’s brother, Malek Merabet, had criticised media outlets and websites for showing the footage. “How dare you take this video and broadcast it? I heard his voice, I recognised him, I saw him being killed and I continue to hear him every day.” The warnings were issued for showing the Kouachi brothers shooting dead a policeman at close range and identifying the two gunmen despite official requests not to do so. BFMTV was also criticised for reporting that someone was hiding in the supermarket.
Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.