PARIS (TheBlaze/AP) — Two journalists are leaving Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper whose staff was decimated in a January terror massacre.
Tributes are left near the Charlie Hebdo offices following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, on January 23, 2015, in Paris, France. The terrorist atrocities started on Wednesday, January 7 with the attack on the French satirical magazine, killing 12, and ended on Friday, January 9 with a siege at a printing company in Dammartin en Goele and a Kosher supermarket in Paris with four hostages and three suspects being killed. (Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)
Artistic director Luz had said in May that he planned to end his career as a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist. In this week's issue, he made known that next week would be his last.
Writer Patrick Pelloux said in an interview Saturday he was also leaving, "probably" in January.
Charlie Hebdo mocked religions, including Islam's prophet Mohammed. Luz drew the cover cartoon — a weeping Mohammed, saying "All is forgiven" — in the issue following the Jan. 7 attack by Islamic extremists on the paper, which left 12 people dead.
Image source: Charlie Hebdo
A second attack two days later on a Kosher grocery store in Paris killed five others. All three gunmen died in clashes with police.
"If I've decided to stop writing it's because ... something has ended," Pelloux told the student radio station Web7Radio. "You have to know how to turn the page one day."
Contributor to French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Patrick Pelloux, speaks on January 23, 2015, prior to participating in a giant march of freedom. (Image source: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images)
He said those who escaped the massacre are not real survivors because "a part of us ended with these attacks."
The paper ignited another uproar recently with a cartoon depicting 3-year-old Syrian migrant Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed up on a Turkish beach, and a sign "So near the goal" — with McDonald's arches and the Ronald McDonald clown.
Luz responded to the uproar in the paper's latest edition, saying the cartoon by Riss aimed to mock "our liberal and hypocritical society," which needed a photo of a dead boy to become aware of the migrants' plight.
Sales of the irreverent paper rose dramatically after the January attack. But staff member Zineb el-Rhazoui told the iTele TV channel Saturday the latest departures are a sign of a "malaise" at Charlie Hebdo.
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