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Huge Crowds and Heavy Security Expected for Antiterror Rally in Paris - New York Times




People gathered at the Place de la République in Paris on Sunday before an antiterror rally. Joël Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images




PARIS — World leaders and hundreds of thousands of people were expected Sunday to join a rally and march under extraordinary security in a government-sponsored show of unity and defiance after a series of terrorist attacks.


Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared on Saturday that France was at “war” with radical Islam after harrowing attacks that claimed the lives of 17 victims. Three gunmen who said they were acting on behalf of Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups were killed by the police on Friday in two separate raids. One gunman had taken hostages at a Jewish supermarket in Paris, and the two others had holed themselves up in a print shop in Dammartin-en-Goële, northeast of the capital.


The French government said it would mobilize 500 additional troops and hundreds more police officers to provide security at the rally, intended to galvanize the shaken country. Public transport across the city is free all day Sunday to encourage participation in the march.



Mr. Valls also called on the French to take to the streets to show solidarity with the victims and to stand behind the idea that republican values of free speech and freedom of expression are the most potent bulwark against terrorists.



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“Indignation. Resistance. Solidarity. I am Charlie” read an invitation to the event that was circulating on social media. The organizers said the rally was to show support for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and to reinforce the message that France and the French would not be cowed by terrorists.


Officials from across Europe and elsewhere, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, have said they planned to attend the rally.


The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also said they would be present.


Security officials in France and across Europe remained on high alert for copycat attacks, even as a French prosecutor said that five people detained in the wake of the terrorist attacks had been released.


Early on Sunday, a German newspaper that had reprinted cartoons from the French weekly Charlie Hebdo lampooning the Prophet Muhammad was targeted in an apparent arson attack, the newspaper reported on its website. It said there were no injuries.


The daily, the Hamburger Morgenpost, had published three cartoons that had been previously published by Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted in Paris on Wednesday. “This much freedom must be possible!” the headline read.


The Associated Press, citing police sources, said that the police in Germany had detained two men in connection with the Hamburger Morgenpost attack.


Several other national and local German newspapers published the cartoons and are now under police protection, the news agency reported.


On Sunday morning, the French Interior Ministry held what it described as a security summit meeting, bringing together top intelligence and law enforcement officials from across Europe and North America to discuss ways to combat and contain terrorism. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was among those attending.


The challenges raised by the attacks — including the threats of foreign fighters and the challenges of violent extremism — are expected to figure prominently at the meeting. On Saturday, French cabinet ministers held an emergency meeting in Paris to discuss measures to prevent other attacks.


The mass rally has created a major security headache for the French authorities, two days after security forces killed Amedy Coulibaly, a heavily armed gunman who is suspected of shooting and killing four hostages at a kosher supermarket near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris, and two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who are suspected of killing 12 people on Wednesday at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.


On Sunday, counterterrorist officials in France said that they were continuing to investigate the links between Mr. Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, the source of their funding and weapons, and whether the suspects were part of a dormant sleeper cell that had been activated.


The investigation is a challenge for French law enforcement officials, who are already grappling with the more than 1,000 French citizens who last year went or planned to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq. The events of the past week appear to confirm fears that some could return to wage attacks on French soil.


The attacks fanned anxieties across France and Europe and raised questions about why the authorities had failed to thwart an attack by suspects who were known to the French security services.



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