The head of the Latvian Islamic Cultural Center, Olegs Petrovs, said in an interview with Panorama, the evening news program of LTV1 public television channel, that the French weekly's employees had deserved punishment for their apparently insulting publications, but that the punishment could have been more lenient than death, for instance, "breaking fingers."
Masked gunmen armed with automatic weapons attacked the editorial offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, killing 12 and wounding 11 people. French special forces killed the suspected attackers in an operation on January 9, but not before another 4 innocent bystanders had been gunned down by the attackers.
A special issue of Charlie Hebdo this week has had a print run of 5 million ad has sold out in many places.
It features on its cover a cartoon of a rag-bag bearded figure in white robe and turban which has been interpreted by many Muslims as a representation of the prophet Mohammed and has therefore sparked predictably enraged protests worldwide.
