An alleged Hamas supported encouraged a repeat of the deadly 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack on another French newspaper over a cartoon “mocking Muslims in Gaza”, a court has been told.
Majid Novsarka, also known as Majid Freeman, allegedly shared the drawing published by French paper Liberation on March 11 2024 via his X account – which had more than 58,000 followers at the time, a trial was told.
In that same post, the 37-year-old referred to the terrorist attack against French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which was carried out in retaliation for the newspaper’s irreverent caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Novsarka posted about the cartoon again the following day on Instagram, saying: “France’s left-wing newspaper Liberation published a cartoon mocking Muslims fasting in Gaza, who are being starved to death by Israel in Ramadan…” jurors sitting at Birmingham Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Tom Williams, opening the trial on Wednesday, said: “The defendant’s Instagram post shows a larger version of the cartoon, with a Muslim man in Gaza chasing two rats and being told by a woman with a child sitting next to her not to do so ‘before sunset’, as Ramadan has begun, the ‘start of a month of fasting’.”
Mr Williams added: “The defendant identifies a cartoon in a French newspaper which is arguably offensive to Muslims, and in the same post, he identifies that when Charlie Hebdo did the same thing almost 10 years before, people who worked at the magazine were shot and killed.
“What did he want his followers to take from his Twitter post? He wanted them, the prosecution suggest, to do the same.
“There is, if you think about it, no other sensible explanation for deliberately putting these two things in exactly the same post.”
The post on X included a video of the attack “showing the two killers firing their weapons, dressed all in black, at one point shouting something about ‘the prophet Mohammed’, and then driving off in a black car,” Mr Williams told the court.
In his Instagram post, Novsarka also identified the cartoonist Corinne Rey, adding: “Liberation is owned by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi,” the court heard.
Jurors were told Novsarka’s X account had 58,500 followers at the time of the alleged offence, which made him “somebody with significant influence online”.
Novsarka, whom prosecution alleges has been a supporter of Hamas since at least May 2021, is also accused of inviting support for the proscribed organisation in posts and messages on Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.
Jurors were provided with a timeline which contained more than 200 entries, including a link the defendant allegedly shared on a WhatsApp group in December 2023 which led to a Hamas recruitment post.
In another post dated December 31 2023, Novsarka allegedly shared a video of Hamas firing rockets at Tel Aviv saying “Happy new year from Hamas to Israel”.
The video itself seems to have come from Hamas, Mr Williams told jurors.
Novsarka was arrested on July 9 2024 by police officers from Counter Terrorism East Midlands at his home address in Leicester.
He was interviewed under caution but made no comments, the court heard.
He denies one count of encouraging terrorism under section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006, one count of inviting support for Hamas under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and a third alternative count of expressing support for a proscribed organisation.
The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack on January 7 2015 took place at the offices of the magazine in Paris, where 12 people, including some of France’s most beloved cartoonists, were shot dead.
The massacre was carried out by two brothers claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda and signalled the beginning of a wave of extremist violence in France, culminating in the co-ordinated November 2015 attacks and the Bataclan atrocity.