Sting will perform at the Bataclan venue’s reopening on November 12, the day before the first anniversary of the attack that killed 90 concertgoers in Paris.
The singer said he wanted to “remember and honor those who lost their lives” and “to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theatre represents”.
The Bataclan music venue has been shut since Islamist gunmen stormed a gig by rock band Eagles of Death Metal last November.
Image source Wikimedia
Three heavily armed gunmen wearing suicide vests were part of co-ordinated attacks around Paris on November 13 that killed 130 people.
Sting said all revenue from his show would be donated to Life For Paris and 13 Novembre: Fraternite Verite.
He played at the Bataclan while on tour with The Police in April 1979.
In a statement on his website, Sting said: “In re-opening the Bataclan, we have two important tasks to reconcile.
“First, to remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attack a year ago, and second to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theatre represents.
“In doing so we hope to respect the memory as well as the life affirming spirit of those who fell. We shall not forget them.”
Tickets for Sting’s show go on sale on November 8.
The Bataclan has already announced its concert line-up for the period following the anniversary. Former Libertines singer Peter Doherty will perform there on November 16 and 17, followed by two concerts by Senegalese star Youssou N’Dour.
Marianne Faithfull, Laurent Garnier and Yael Naim are among the other artists who will perform at the Bataclan this month
Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers say they will no longer defend the main suspect in last year’s Islamist attacks in Paris.
He will use his right to remain silent, one of the lawyers, Frank Berton, told BFM TV.
“We said from the beginning… that if our client remained silent we would quit his defense,” Frank Berton said, alongside fellow lawyer Sven Mary.
The attacks in Paris in November 2015 on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France killed 130 people.
ISIS said it was behind the attacks.
Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March 2016 and has kept silent since his transfer to France in April.
The attacker is being monitored 24 hours a day by video in his prison cell.
Frank Berton said in May the suspect was “particularly disturbed” by the surveillance.
Salah Abdeslam is thought to have played a key role in planning the Paris attacks and transporting the attackers, but investigators are yet to determine his specific role.
The lawyers informed Salah Abdeslam they would no longer represent him on October 6, BFM TV reports. It says that at present, he does not want to be represented by anyone else.
Legal representation is not required while the investigation continues but will be at his trial.
“The real victims of all of this are the victims of the Paris attacks, because they are entitled to this truth and they have the right to try to comprehend the incomprehensible,” Sven Mary said.
More than 115,000 security personnel have been mobilized in the wake of Friday’s Paris attacks by ISIS, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has announced.
Bernard Cazeneuve said 128 more raids on suspected militants were carried out. French air strikes also hit Islamic State in Syria overnight.
ISIS has said it carried out the attacks on bars, restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and Stade de France stadium in which 129 people died.
A huge manhunt is under way for one of the suspects, Salah Abdeslam.
Salah Abdeslam is believed to have fled across the border to his native Belgium. Belgian police have released more pictures of the wanted man.
Photo Reuters
Belgium’s government has raised its terror threat level because of the failure so far to arrest Salah Abdeslam.
Bernard Cazeneuve said: “We have mobilized 115,000 police, gendarmes and military over the whole of our national territory to insure the protection of French people.”
He vowed to boost funding for police equipment, which he said had fallen by 17% between 2007 and 2012.
The interior minister added that 128 raids on suspected Islamist militants had been carried out overnight on November 16 to 17. More than 160 raids were made earlier on November 16, with 23 people arrested and dozens of weapons seized.
French media reported that during raids police found a safe house used by the attackers in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris.
Meanwhile France has evoked a previously unused clause in the Treaty on European Union obliging other member states to provide it with “aid and assistance by all means in their power”.
Within minutes, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that all 28 member states had offered “full support and readiness to provide all the aid and assistance needed”.
The measures came as US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Paris.
Speaking on November 16, John Kerry described ISIS as “psychopathic monsters”.
After meeting French President Francois Hollande on November 17, John Kerry said everyone understood that after Paris and other recent attacks “we have to step up efforts to hit them at the core” and improve border security.
President Francois Hollande is due to fly to Washington and Moscow next week for talks with Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.
Paris attacks on November 13 reportedly occurred at multiple sites across the French capital.
Bataclan concert hall, 50 boulevard Voltaire, 11th district – gun and suicide bomb attacks
Le Bataclan is an old 19th-century variety theatre that in recent years has been run as a rock venue. It’s located on the boundary between two hip, densely populated neighborhoods full of bars, restaurants, and cafés that would likely have been very busy at the time of the attack.
Stade de France, 93216 St Denis, just north of Paris – explosions near venue as France played Germany in soccer friendly match
Built for the 1998 World Cup, the Stade de France is France’s largest stadium, a huge venue seating more than 80,000 that dominates the Saint Denis Quarter. The location itself is just outside Paris Proper beyond the Boulevard Périphérique Beltway, in a lightly populated quarter dominated by major roads. In contrast to the other attack locations closer to central Paris, the commune of Saint Denis is a relatively low-income area where over 35 percent of residents were not born in France.
Le Carillon bar, 18 rue Alibert, 10th district – gun attack
Le Petit Cambodge restaurant, 20 rue Alibert, 10th district – gun attack
Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge are a café-bar and a Cambodian restaurant, respectively, that are located directly opposite one of the city’s oldest hospitals, the Hôpital Saint-Louis. These aren’t especially fancy or controversial places in themselves. They’re fairly typical of the area around the Canal Saint Martin, a traditionally working class area of Paris that has become fashionable in recent decades.
La Belle Equipe, 92 rue de Charonne, 11th district – gun attack
The Belle Équipe brasserie is located on one of the busier café and restaurant strips of Eastern Paris. Rue Charonne is one of the main streets in the Bastille neighborhood, an area now almost equally as popular with visitors as with locals. The brasserie itself is a moderately upscale place typical of its area.
La Casa Nostrarestaurant, 2 rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11th district – gun attack
A transcript of a footage showing Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly during a bloody rampage inside Jewish supermarket HyperCacher has been released nearly two months after the attacks in the French capital.
Amedy Coulibaly delivers an anti-Semitic rant and shouts “Stand up or I’ll kill you” at hostages, according to a transcript obtained by Le Nouvel Observateur.
During the seven-minute video he shoots dead three of his four victims.
Seventeen people died in three days of violence that began at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine on January 7.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi killed 12 when they burst into Charlie Hebdo‘s offices.
Police believe Amedy Coulibaly shot dead a policewoman in the Montrouge area of Paris the day before the attack on the kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes.
Investigators are examining seven minutes 45 seconds of footage apparently filmed by Amedy Coulibaly on a GoPro camera worn during the siege, according to reports.
The footage shows Amedy Coulibaly shouting “Nobody move”, before grabbing hold of a customer, asking his name, and then shooting him dead.
He asks another man what origin he is. And when the hostage replies “Jewish”, he kills him too.
“So you know why I am here then. Allahu Akbar,” Amedy Coulibaly shouts, according to Le Nouvel Observateur‘s report.
He is also heard making anti-Semitic remarks when one woman tries to tell him that his hostages have done nothing wrong.
Amedy Coulibaly is believed to have had a long history of criminal activity – including drugs offences – and links to at least one of the Kouachi brothers.
A separate video that emerged after Amedy Coulibaly was shot dead by police apparently showed him pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, and claiming the attacks were “retribution”.
The supermarket footage apparently shows Amedy Coulibaly asking one of his hostages to help up upload his camera footage to a computer.
Shop assistant Lassana Bathily is thought to have saved many customers’ lives by hiding them in a cold store.
The transcript comes a day after France announced plans to improve dialogue with the country’s Muslim community.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is set to go on trial for a Facebook comment appearing to back Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly.
The comment referred to a series of three attacks in Paris in January in which 17 people were killed.
The controversial French Comedian is charged with condoning terrorism.
If found guilty, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala could face up to 7 years in jail and a €5,000 ($5,900) fine.
He already has several convictions for inciting anti-Semitism.
Following a massive march in Paris to condemn the attacks, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala wrote on his Facebook account: “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly [French: je me sens Charlie Coulibaly].”
The statement combined the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan adopted worldwide after the Paris attacks with the name of one of the three gunmen involved in the attacks.
AmedyCoulibaly killed a policewoman near a Jewish school on January 8 before going on to hold up kosher supermarket HyperCacher the following day, when he murdered four Jewish hostages.
On January 7, two gunmen killed 12 people at magazine Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that has frequently launched withering attacks on religion, including depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala’s comment drew an angry response from many in France.
French PM Manuel Valls said that freedom of speech should not be confused with anti-Semitism, racism and Holocaust denial.
After Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he had asked the authorities to investigate Dieudonne M’bala M’bala’s remarks, the comedian posted a response on his Facebook page, arguing that he was being treated as a public enemy when all he wanted to do was make people laugh.
The comedian’s detention drew claims of double standards over free speech from some quarters in France.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is also facing an inquiry into whether he condoned terrorism in a video in which he mocked the beheading of US journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants.
He was acquitted last year over comments made in a video in which he called for the release of a man who tortured and murdered Ilan Halimi, a Jewish man, in Paris in 2006.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has attracted controversy over his trademark “quenelle” gesture. It has been called an inverted Nazi salute, but the comic argues it was intended to be anti-establishment.
Fritz-Joly Joachin, a French national said to be connected to the Kouachi brothers, has been extradited from Bulgaria to France.
Fritz-Joly Joachin was detained while trying to cross into Turkey, a French judicial official said.
He has admitted to being an associate of the attackers of Charlie Hebdo magazine but denies being aware of their plans.
Seventeen people were killed in a series of attacks in Paris in January.
Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, is accused of participating in a terrorist group and of having links to a network of people sending fighters to Syria.
He arrived in France on January 29 and was due to be questioned later in the day, unnamed judicial sources told AFP.
French police say Fritz-Joly Joachin is associated with Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi.
The two brothers stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo on January 7 and opened fire using automatic weapons, killing 12 people.
Two days later, a third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, killed four Jewish people at HyperCacher supermarket. A policewoman was also shot dead.
The Islamist gunmen had links to groups based in the Middle East, and said they were “avenging” cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Charlie Hebdo magazine.
Fritz-Joly Joachin was thought to have been on his way to Syria with his three-year-old son when he was detained, according Bulgaria’s Sophia news agency.
French authorities have arrested four other people for alleged links to the Kouachi brothers.
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