The weekly had published dozens of cartoons ridiculing the highest religious and political figure in the Islamic republic as part of a competition it launched in December in support of the three-month-old protest movement.But the country was united in grief when in January 2015 it was targeted in a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen who claimed to be avenging the magazine's decision to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed."It was a way to show our support for Iranian men and women who risk their lives to defend their freedom against the theocracy that has oppressed them since 1979," Charlie Hebdo's director Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, wrote in an editorial.Khomeini in 1989 famously issued a religious decree, or fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill the British author Salman Rushdie for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of "The Satanic Verses".The Iranian regime has been shaken by three months of protests triggered by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd who was arrested for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code for women."