Gunmen who stormed Charlie Hebdo offices ‘may have had training’ | World news | The GuardianGunmen who stormed Charlie Hebdo offices ‘may have had training’ | World news | The Guardian










Close






Skip to main content

 









sign in








subscribe









search




jobs






more


from the guardian:


jobs


change edition:



switch to the UK edition


switch to the AU edition







US edition




switch to the UK edition




switch to the Australia edition













The Guardian


Winner of the Pulitzer prize











home


›
world


›
europe




americas


asia


middle east


africa


australia


UK










home




US




world
selected




opinion




sports




soccer




tech




arts




lifestyle




fashion




business




money




travel




environment







browse all sections
close







 











Charlie Hebdo attack



Gunmen who stormed Charlie Hebdo offices ‘may have had training’









Analysts say the three seemed professional and organised, as investigators probe reports of their claim to be from al-QaidaCharlie Hebdo attack: follow the latest developments














Armed gunmen face police near offices of Charlie Hebdo after attack that left 12 people dead. Photograph: Anne Gelbard/AFP/Getty Images




Jason Burke, 
Ewen MacAskill and 
Alexandra Topping


Wednesday 7 January 2015 15.31 EST







Share on Facebook







Share on Twitter







Share via Email







Share on LinkedIn







Share on Google+







Share on WhatsApp
















The bearing of the gunmen who stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo suggested they had received at least some military training, according to security analysts.
They appeared calm throughout the attack, fired single or double shots rather than panicked bursts of automatic fire, and the careful pattern of bullet holes in the windscreen of the police car shot at during the attack hinted at training.
Some of the analysts said the way they conducted themselves, their refusal to panic when the police arrived and their successful getaway indicated they had rehearsed the attack.
“They were very professional, very organised. It was well-timed. You can’t pull off something like this without military training,” said former US army lieutenant-colonel Tony Shaffer, who was CIA-trained and worked as an intelligence officer with special forces in Afghanistan.








    Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video. 



 Facebook 
 Twitter 
 Pinterest 
  expand 


Amateur footage purporting to show the attack.


But others were more cautious, saying the attackers did not appear to have completed a thorough reconnaissance of their target or gathered much intelligence about it. Instructors from al-Qaida have long told volunteers to prioritise both.
According to witnesses, the three men initially went to the wrong address before finding the proper one, only gaining access by chance and going up the wrong staircase. They also had to ask the whereabouts of targets.
French security officials have reported a rise in domestic extremist activity both inspired by Islamic State, the militant organisation that has captured swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory, and directly organised by French veterans of fighting in the Middle East.
At least one official has suggested the group may have sent individuals into France to execute terrorist strikes.
On Wednesday, President François Hollande said the French government had foiled a number of terrorist plots in the weeks before the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
“We are at a very difficult moment. Several terrorist plots have been stopped over the previous weeks. We are threatened because we are a country of freedom,” he said at the scene of the attack, but gave no further details of the conspiracies that had been halted.
Investigators were on Wednesday night examining statements from two witnesses claiming the men who launched the attack had said they were from “core” al-Qaida, founded by the late 1980s and operating from Pakistan, or one of its more recently created affiliates.
Corinne Rey, a designer who said she had been forced to open the door to the magazine’s office at gunpoint, told one local newspaper the attackers spoke perfect French and had told her they were from al-Qaida.
A second witness claimed that one of the attackers told him to “tell the media that we are from al-Qaida in Yemen”.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen since being displaced from Saudi Arabia a decade ago, is the only official affiliate of the original organisation which has consistently shown an interest in striking the west – and has come close to successfully doing so – in recent years. It has long worried western intelligence services. In 2013 AQAP published a “wanted” list that included cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier in its internet magazine Inspire, with the headline “A bullet a day keeps the infidel away”.
However, a direct link to AQAP seems improbable. The group’s previous efforts have mainly relied on the bomb-making skills and ingenuity of a few senior figures. An armed assault of this nature would be a dramatic new departure and the group has no history of operating in France.
France has a long history of jihadi violence. A first wave of militant Islamist strikes occurred in the mid-1990s, an overspill of a savage civil war pitting extremists against authorities in Algeria. Competition among increasingly brutal and extreme militant groups in the former French colony, a rapid escalation of violence and pressure from security forces led to one faction hijacking a French passenger plane in Algiers in December 1994 with the possible aim of crashing it into Paris. When the aircraft reached Marseille, police commandos stormed the plane and killed all four hijackers.
In 1995 a series of bombs exploded in Paris, blamed on local networks run by Algerian militant groups. A year later a group of men radicalised in the Bosnia war launched a series of robberies and escalating attacks across the north of France.
French nationals were also drawn into the international plots linked to militant groups including bin Laden and al-Qaida in the late 1990s. One man, a veteran of the Algerian war who had gained French citizenship, planned to bomb the French embassy in Paris. A Frenchman, Zacarias Moussaoui was involved in the 9/11 plots, travelling to the US to train as a pilot. A group based in Germany targeted Strasbourg.
If France escaped mass casualty attacks such as those in London in 2005, concerns remained high throughout the decade. Several French volunteers were killed in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 in action against US forces. Many more took part in action there and some were reported to have reached makeshift training camps in Pakistan or been part of networks elsewhere in Europe linked to al-Qaida.
Overall however, French intelligence officials long believed they had the problems largely under control. They supported expert analysis that the riots across France of late 2005 were not a “European intifada”, as described by rightwing commentators in the UK and the US, but a classic case of urban violence. Nor did widespread protests at the publication of cartoons of prophet Muhammad by European publications, including Charlie Hebdo, at around the same time lead to violence.
Officials remained worried about the growing strength of hardline, ultra-conservative forms of Islamic practice in France, particularly in poorer areas and in prisons.
The conflict in Syria and elsewhere following the upheaval of the Arab spring led to a new surge of radicalisation and mobilisation of a minority of France’s 6 million Muslims. Around 1,000 men and women who are either French citizens or residents are already in Syria, have returned from the country or on the way there, officials have said. At least another 36 have died in the conflict. France has been involved in the US-led air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq since September.
French forces also took the lead in combating Islamist extremists who had seized large swaths of Mali in 2013 and still have 3,000 troops deployed in the Sahel region. They are also a key part of peacekeeping efforts in Central African Republic, where Christians and Muslims have violently clashed over the past two years.
Around half of those who have travelled to Syria from France are previously unknown to police. They include large numbers of converts, including two men involved in the execution of captured Syrian army soldiers shown in a recent video released by Islamic State.
As elsewhere in Europe, French counter-terrorist agencies have struggled to contain apparently random “lone wolf” attackers.
Many analysts point to killing of three soldiers and four Jewish civilians by 23-year-old Mohamed Merah in 2012 as a turning point. A petty criminal from south-west France, Merah, who was shot dead after being cornered in an apartment in the city of Toulouse following 10 days on the run, had travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan a year before his shooting spree and met a known al-Qaida recruiter.
On 25 May 2013 a French soldier was stabbed by a convert in the Paris suburb of La Défense , three days after the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, in what appeared to be a copycat attack.
Last year, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen who had fought for Islamic State in Syria, was detained on suspicion of shooting four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels.
All these attacks were acts by individuals who had been exposed to radical propaganda or surrounded by a “subculture” of violent extremism. Both Merah and Nemmouche had seen combat.
Shaffer, the Afghan veteran and expert, said that the precision and apparent skill of Wednesday’s attackers did not mean that they had been in the military, only that they had been trained by someone who had.
They might have been in a paramilitary group, or attended camps in the Middle East or north Africa, or were simply taught basics in a forest in France, he said.
Charlie Hebdo attack: follow the latest developments



Topics



Charlie Hebdo attack




Al-Qaida




France




Europe




Islamic State (Isis)








Share on Facebook







Share on Twitter







Share via Email







Share on LinkedIn







Share on Google+







Share on WhatsApp



















 






more on this story














Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video

File footage of one of the Paris gunmen, Cherif Kouachi, arriving at court in 2008 on charges of helping to funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency



Published: 13 Jan 2015




Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video












Analysis Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris

The radicalisation of the Kouachi brothers began in a picturesque park in the capital while Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris












Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras

Officials try to pinpoint when and where cameras found in possession of Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly were obtained



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras












Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices

Mobilisation of 10,000 troops to guard potentially vulnerable locations comes as prime minister warns that ‘threat still present’



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices














Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly




Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly








Analysis Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based








Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis








Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends

Olivier Tonneau




Published: 13 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends
















popular












 








The Guardian






back to top














home




US




world
selected




opinion




sports




soccer




tech




arts




lifestyle




fashion




business




money




travel




environment







all sections
close







home




US




world
selected




UK




europe




americas




asia




middle east




africa




australia






opinion




sports




soccer




MLS




NFL




MLB




NBA




NHL






soccer




live scores




tables




competitions




results




fixtures




clubs






tech




games






arts




movies




tv & radio




music




books




art & design




stage




classical






lifestyle




food




health




love & sex




family




women




home & garden






fashion




business




markets




companies






money




travel




USA




europe




UK






environment




development




cities






science




media




crosswords




video











World




›
Charlie Hebdo attack








jobs

subscribe
all topics
all contributors

info and resources

contact us

feedback

complaints & corrections
terms & conditions
privacy policy
cookie policy
securedrop


© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.






















 
