The Kouachi brothers – the gunmen – were born in France to Algerian immigrant parents, but Khadra says discussions of the terrorist’s nationality are irrelevant. “For me, the murder doesn’t have an identity. It doesn’t have a nationality. It is characterised, it is identified by its wrongdoing. So I shouldn’t suddenly have to feel guilty because he’s Algerian. We’ve got to stop making this link that shouldn’t exist between where a murderer comes from and his act. We have to focus on the act, and nothing more.”
Khadra says the Charlie Hebdo attack affected him personally. “I was shocked,” he says. “Even if I’m Algerian, even if I’m from a country where 200,000 people died, where we went through a horribly dark time, we’re still shocked by the attack. Because each organised murder reminds us a little of what we lived through here in Algeria, and it’s natural that no-one can get used to that atrocity.”
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