“The grave and unforgivable sin dedicated by a French weekly in insulting the luminous and holy persona of (the) Prophet revealed, as soon as extra, the hostility and malicious grudge harboured by political and cultural organisations within the West towards Islam and the Muslim group,” Khamenei stated in an English-language assertion.

“The excuse of ‘freedom of expression’ made by some French politicians so as to not condemn this grave crime of insulting the Holy Prophet of Islam is totally unacceptable, unsuitable and demagogic.”

Throughout a go to to Beirut final week, French President Emmanuel Macron stated Charlie Hebdo had damaged no legislation in republishing the cartoons to mark the September 2 opening of the trial right into a lethal 2015 assault on its places of work by Islamist extremists.

“There’s… in France a freedom to blaspheme that’s linked to freedom of conscience,” Macron stated.

“It’s my job to guard all these freedoms.”

Twelve individuals, together with a few of France’s most celebrated cartoonists, had been killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Stated and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage on the journal’s Paris places of work.

The perpetrators had been killed within the aftermath of the bloodbath however 14 alleged accomplices within the assaults, which additionally focused a Jewish grocery store, went on trial.

Regardless of its outrage on the cartoons, Iran condemned the assault on the paper’s places of work.

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)