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Remembering The Victims Of The 'Charlie Hebdo' Attack

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

We're learning more about the 12 people killed in yesterday's attack on Charlie Hebdo. Among them, the satirical weekly's 47-year-old editor Stephane Charbonnier - known as Charb - whom the attackers singled out by name. Charb had been under police protection for years because of threats. And his security detail that day, a 49-year-old police sergeant in the protection services division named Franck Brinsolaro, was also killed.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The cartooning staff of Charlie Hebdo suffered huge losses. Among the dead, the prolific 80-year-old artist Georges Wolinksi, a Tunisian-born Jew. He was one of the founders of Charlie Hebdo and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. His daughter posted a photo yesterday showing her father's desk with pen and paper. Papa is gone, she wrote, not Wolinski.

BLOCK: Cartoonist Jean Cabut also died, one week before his 77th birthday. With a mop of dark hair and an impish grin, Cabut was considered, along with Wolinski, the dean and spiritual father of many of today's cartoonists, according to Le Monde.

SIEGEL: Also dead is Bernard Verlhac, who worked under the name Tignous, which means small moth. It was the nickname his grandmother gave him. He was a member of the organization Cartooning for Peace.

BLOCK: And Philippe Honore, 73, the artist who drew the last cartoon tweeted by Charlie Hebdo. The drawing sends best wishes to the leader of the Islamic State, to which al-Baghdadi replies, and especially good health.

SIEGEL: The gunmen also killed Algerian-born Mustapha Ourrad, a self-taught copy editor who moved to Paris at the age of 20 on a ticket his friends bought for him.

And Bernard Maris, an economist and admirer of John Maynard Keynes. Maris wrote critically of consumerism and he ran for the French Parliament in 2002. He wrote for Charlie Hebdo under the pseudonym Oncle Bernard.

BLOCK: Also killed was Michel Renaud, a former journalist who happened to be visiting the Charlie Hebdo offices at the time of the attack.

SIEGEL: Elsa Cayat, the only woman killed in the attack, was a psychoanalyst who wrote the bimonthly column "Le Divan," "The Couch."

Frederic Boisseau had been the building's caretaker for 15 years. A husband and father of two, Boisseau was seated at the reception desk when the attackers entered the building and shot him.

BLOCK: And finally, there was police officer Ahmed Merabet. Merabet was on patrol in the area and was killed in a shoot-out with the attackers as they made their escape. Merabet was Muslim. And on Twitter today, thousands paid tribute to the slain officer by tweeting the words, Je Suis Ahmed - I am Ahmed, echoing the signs seen at Paris vigils and in shop windows reading, I am Charlie - Je Suis Charlie. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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