3.7M people rally for anti-terrorism in France, some in Las Vegas
In Las Vegas, people marched near the Paris casino-hotel in Las Vegas to remember the 12 people killed in a terrorist attack in France earlier this week.
The march was in solidarity with people around the world who participated in marches to honor the lost lives that included journalists and cartoonists from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
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At least 3.7 million people, including world leaders, marched in anti-terrorism rallies in Paris and elsewhere in France on Sunday, French officials said, calling the massive gathering in the nation’s capital the largest in France’s history.
The day was emotional and peaceful, a gesture of unity just days after Islamic extremists slaughtered 17 people.
World leaders joined French President Francois Hollande, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The day also brought together an unlikely duo at the rally: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A photographer captured Merkel leaning her head gently on Hollande’s shoulder.
The rally began with a march through Paris streets at 3 p.m., but a massive group of people stayed into the night. Among them was Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris and president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith.
One man in the crowd said the French people must not “give in to fear.” Terrorists, he said, “will not win.”
Others carried signs that echoed the now-famous phrase that honored slain journalists at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, “Je suis Charlie.”
Zineb El Rhazoui, a journalist at the magazine, talked about the magazine’s financial struggles and the difficulty of working under constant threats: “I am very happy for all this help, but for us, it was a heavy price to pay, and it is too much.
“It took 12 deaths for us to finally be a little bit understood after we have been hated and booed by everybody.”
For the guards and police officers who lost their lives in last week’s attacks in France, there were signs reading “We are all cops.”
For Muslims in France who want to convey that the ideology embraced by the Muslim gunmen does not represent the whole of the faith, signs read “We are all Muslims.”
For everyone, no matter their race, class or ethnic background, signs that said “We are all French” were held up with pride.
Sunday brought the end to a traumatic week in France.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, were killed Friday after one of two violent standoffs. Twelve people were slain at the satirical magazine offices on Wednesday.
In the other standoff, Amedy Coulibaly, suspected in the shooting death of a police officer, was killed by security forces Friday after he shot and killed four hostages during a siege at a kosher market.
French law enforcement officers were told to remove their social media presence and carry their weapons at all times, because terror sleeper cells had been activated over the past 24 hours in the country, a French police source who attended a briefing Saturday told CNN terror analyst Samuel Laurent.
Coulibaly had made several phone calls about targeting police officers in France, according to the source.
A video that appears to show Coulibaly pledging allegiance to terror group ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is being shared on Jihadist websites.
Brian Hale, the spokesman for the U.S. director of national intelligence, told CNN on Sunday that the U.S. intelligence community is “aware of the video and is reviewing it to determine its authenticity.”
Threats against people outside of France, particularly against journalists, persisted Sunday.
The offices of Belgian newspaper Le Soir were evacuated Sunday after members of the newsroom received an anonymous phone call of a bomb threat, the newspaper reported. Police locked down the street where paper operates.
And officials in the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement personnel across the United States were alerted to a new threat from ISIS after the terror group released a video message Saturday to its followers.
An ISIS spokesman, Abu Mohammed al Adnani, told followers to “rise up and kill intelligence officers, police officers, soldiers and civilians,” and specifically named the United States, France, Australia and Canada as targets, according to a memo CNN has obtained.
ISIS has before made similar threats.
NYPD employees were told to “remain alert and consider tactics at all times while on patrol,” especially in light of the attacks in France last week, in an internal memo.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a similar bulletin to law enforcement. Both notices make clear that the threat is consistent with previous threats ISIS and others, including al Qaeda, have made.
As investigators worked leads, a sea of demonstrators in Paris broke into song, held hands, cheered and passionately denounced violence.
An imam and a number of Muslims were in the crowd. A young Muslim French woman held a sign that said, “I am a Jew.” She told CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen that she was horrified to hear of the killings, and the killers do not live according to the Islamic principles she’s been taught.
“Our religion is the religion of love. … Our religion loves Jews … loves Christians. We are not terrorists,” one Muslim man said, his voice rising.
He lifted his arm and gestured to many people around him who came to denounce violence: “We are all Muslim!”
