French TV and radio stations broadcast that Lilian Lepère was hiding inside print shop while Charlie Hebdo gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi were in the building

A graphic designer who hid under a sink for eight hours to escape the Charlie Hebdo gunmen is suing French television and radio stations, accusing them of putting his life in danger by revealing his presence.



On 9 January, two days after Saïd and Chérif Kouachi killed 12 people in an attack on the magazine’s offices, they arrived heavily armed at a small printing firm on a quiet industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële outside Paris, on the run from police.

When the print firm’s boss first spotted them outside, he turned and told his 26-year-old employee, graphic designer Lilian Lepère, to hide.

While his boss chatted to the men, offered them coffee and bandaged a superficial flesh wound, Lepère squeezed into a tiny cupboard under a sink and hid there in the foetal position for more than eight hours.

The graphic designer who texted vital information to police from his hiding place Read more

Afraid to move in case the gunmen heard him, it took a long time until he could ease his phone out of his pocket and send text messages to relatives to call the police. From his hiding place, he stayed in contact with officers by phone for hours.



But while he was concealing himself, the TV stations France 2 and TF1 and RMC radio revealed that someone was hiding in the printing shop. RMC interviewed Yves Albarello, the MP for the area, who made the revelation.

French prosecutors are investigating whether the media endangered Lepère’s life. Lepère escaped when police stormed the building and killed the gunmen. Afterwards, he described having heard the attackers looking around the kitchen where he was hiding. “One of them opened the cupboard right next to mine in which there wasn’t anything interesting. It was 50cm away. I said to myself, ‘they’re going to look in everything,’” he told France 2.

One of the attackers drank from the sink. “I heard the water running above my head because my head was pushed against the sink. I saw his shadow through the tiny crack of light in the door … it was a surreal moment. I thought it was like a film.”

Another investigation has been launched after a separate complaint by several people who hid in a basement fridge of the Paris kosher supermarket, which was attacked on the same day by another gunman, Amédy Coulibaly, who shot dead four people and held others hostage.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest French gendarmes near the scene of the hostage-taking in Dammartin-en-Goële. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

When Coulibaly burst into the supermarket with a Kalashnikov, many of the shoppers fled downstairs to a storeroom. The gunman sent a shopworker downstairs to ask them to come back or everyone would be shot. Some, including a man and his three-year-old son went back upstairs, others resolutely stayed downstairs.

A group of people, including a mother and baby, hid behind cardboard boxes in a fridge. They stayed on their knees, thinking that if Coulibaly came for them he would shoot at chest height and they’d escape. During their four-hour wait, while keeping the baby quiet with keys and other objects to play with, they sent text messages to relatives and the police.

In the middle of the hostage-taking, while the group was still hiding, a reporter on the BFMTV rolling-news channel announced: “There’s a person, a woman, who might have been hiding from the start in the fridge. And who is probably still there.”

The group told the daily Libération that they had complained “so this never happens to anyone else”.

In February, the French broadcast regulator formally censured several major TV and radio networks for serious breaches in their coverage of the attacks, which left 17 people dead.

The warnings were issued for showing the Kouachi brothers shooting dead a policeman at close range and identifying the two gunmen despite official requests not to do so. BFMTV was also criticised for reporting that someone was hiding in the supermarket.