A decade on, how one survivor copes with the legacy of the Charlie Hebdo massacre
On January 7th 2015, a terrorist attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris murdered 12 people, including its editor Stéphane Charbonnier. The weekly publication's legal affairs writer Sigolène Vinson was in the office during the bloody attack by brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi but her life was spared. Ten years and three trials later, she tells Mediapart's Matthieu Suc that what helps heal her is “sunshine, sea and silence”.
AA former employment lawyer, Sigolène Vinson became legal affairs columnist for the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in 2012. Three years later, on January 7th 2015, she came face-to-face with Chérif Kouachi, one of the men who carried out the murderous attack on the weekly publication, only to be spared by him. Since then, she has been rebuilding her life in a fisherman’s house by the edge of the Étang de Berre saltwater lagoon west of Marseille in the south of France, where she writes novels and serves as a municipal councillor in the town of Martigues.
