Jewish victim in Charlie Hebdo attack received death threats

A Jewish victim of the massacre at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine received threatening phone calls prior to the attack, warning her to quit her job at the satirical magazine, the cousin of the slain Elsa Cayat told CNN.

Cayat, a columnist for the magazine and a psychiatrist by profession, was killed in the shooting attack last week along with nine of her colleagues, including Jewish cartoonist Georges Wolinski, and two police officers.

Sophie Bramly told the TV station on Friday that she believed her cousin was targeted for being a Jew, “Though, obviously, I can’t know for sure.”

“And also when I talked to her brother last night, he was telling me she had been getting phone calls for a while, anonymous phone calls but the calls were saying, basically, dirty Jew. You should stop working for Charlie Hebdo otherwise we’re going to kill you,” she said.

“So, if you put two and two together, it seems like, yes, she was definitely killed because she was Jewish,” Bramly added, pointing out that the gunmen had “spared all of the women, and she was the only one killed. And she was the only one Jewish.”

Cayat’s brother, Frederick, told The Independent that the family had brushed off the death threats.

“We decided they were only verbal garbage,” said Frederick. “We didn’t think it could actually happen.”

Cayat’s sister, Beatrice, meanwhile, dismissed the allegation that her younger sister was targeted because she was Jewish and told CNN that Elsa was gunned down for working at Charlie Hebdo, where she “just died for the freedom of thinking.”

Bramly described Cayat, 54, as an “incredibly passionate woman” and “brilliant psychoanalyst.”

According to The Independent, the Tunisian-born psychiatrist received her medical degree at the age of 21, and was survived by a daughter.