Turkish hacker threatens French newspaper over Islamic jibe

Nov 6, 2011, 13:56 GMT

Paris - A Turkish hacker who claimed responsibility for a cyber-attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier in the week also threatened Sunday to attack the website of a major French daily.

An Istanbul student of information technology, who referred to himself only as Ekber, said he brought down the satirical magazine's website out of outrage at an issue poking fun at the Islamic faith, in comments to French weekly Journal du Dimanche.

He said he was also keeping an eye on left-leaning French newspaper Liberation because it gave the Charlie Hebdo editors sanctuary after their offices were firebombed early Wednesday. Liberation then published caricatures in the style of the satirical magazine the following day.

The Wednesday firebomb attack came hours before Charlie Hebdo put out a special issue focusing on the recent Tunisian elections, in which an Islamist party took the most votes.

The publication had, for the one issue, changed its name to Sharia Hebdo, with a reference to its chief editor 'Mohammed' and a tagline of '100 lashes if you don't fall over dead from laughing.'

Denying any connection with the firebombing, the hacker - who acts with a group of friends under the name of the Turkish town Akincilar - said, 'If Liberation again publishes these drawings, we will also do something about it.'

Ekber claimed his group had already carried out attacks on 6,000 websites.