French police identify potential fourth terror cell member after Paris attacks | World news | The GuardianFrench police identify potential fourth terror cell member after Paris attacks | World news | The Guardian










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Charlie Hebdo attack



French police identify potential fourth terror cell member after Paris attacks









Investigators painstakingly follow the money trail of the Charlie Hebdo attackers as they seek other suspected jihadists














French media claim a police search of a house rented by Amedy Coulibaly before the Paris attacks has uncovered evidence pointing towards a fourth suspected terror cell member. Photograph: AP



Associated Press in Paris


Wednesday 14 January 2015 19.32 EST







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Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages at a Paris kosher supermarket, rented a small suburban house the week before and filled it with an impressive arsenal of late-model weapons, police said on Wednesday.
A published report said a search of the house enabled police to identity a potential fourth attacker as investigators follow the money and supply systems for the three known killers, all of whom died in police raids. Police told the Associated Press that as many as six members of the same radical Islamic terror cell may be at large.
“We have put our finger on some extremely dangerous people, men and women,” French police union spokesman Christophe Crepin said. “We are really in a war.”
Of special interest is the small attached house on a quiet street in the town of Gentilly, south of Paris, that Coulibaly rented about two weeks ago. French police officials refused to say what has been discovered inside the dwelling, but the newspaper Le Parisien reported that detectives from the Paris criminal brigade and a special police anti-terrorism unit seized a scooter that allowed them to identity “a fourth man” who acted as Coulibaly’s accomplice.
The newspaper did not identify the man by name, but said he may have shot and seriously wounded a jogger in nearby Fontenay-aux-Roses on 7 January, the same day two friends of Coulibaly, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
“The fourth man,” who has a lengthy criminal record, may have been involved in that attack, the newspaper reported, adding that he may have already escaped to Syria.
When an AP reporter visited the Gentilly house this week, neighbours said they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, with one saying the muscular, 1.65 metres (5ft 5in) Coulibaly had been a regular at the local weight room.
Officials said the attackers accumulated an arsenal that included three late-model Kalashnikov assault rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a machine pistol, smoke grenades and bombs, fragmentation grenades, handguns and industrial explosives.
In addition to the weapons, investigators are painstakingly following the money trail. Former drug-dealing associates of Coulibaly told AP he was selling marijuana and hashish in the Paris suburbs as recently as a month ago. French news accounts have said the Kouachi brothers sold counterfeit sporting goods made in China.
Crepin said police believe the killers did not have the resources to bankroll the terrorist operation on their own. Not only was there the cost of weapons, ammunition and equipment to cover, he said, but also money needed to rent suspected hideouts like the one in Gentilly and to pay their living expenses.
“We’re dealing with a well-organised mafia-like structure,” Crepin said.
However, Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London, said that in keeping with the guidelines laid down in an influential handbook for jihadists published in 2004, he believed the Paris attacks were self-financed.
“They could use credit card fraud … even stealing from people,” Neumann said. “Their attitude is the whole of society [in Europe] is rotten infidels.”
A regional French newspaper has unearthed one additional revenue source: a loan for £4,638 (about $7,000) that Coulibaly obtained on 4 December from a consumer-lending company with headquarters in northern France. In a video made public after all three terrorists had been shot dead by police, Coulibaly said he had given the brothers several thousand euros so they could buy gear.
But two US intelligence officials cast doubt on that account on Wednesday, saying they doubt that the Islamic State-affiliated Coulibaly coordinated in advance with the Kouachi brothers, who said they were acting on behalf of al-Qaida in Yemen.
Al-Qaida in Yemen claimed responsibility for the brothers’ attack on Wednesday, but it had been unclear which brother had made that connection. On Wednesday, the US officials said Chérif Kouachi was believed to have gone to train in Yemen in 2011 but used his brother Said’s ID. The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted discussing a matter under investigation.
Despite their ties to rival Islamic terror groups, the personal bonds between the three homegrown French terrorists apparently were stronger than the divergent strains of radical ideology. Coulibaly and Chérif Kouachi reportedly met when both were in prison in 2005, and a French judicial document obtained by AP said both subsequently became “students” of an Algerian-born Islamist named Djamel Beghal who was convicted of plotting to blow up the US embassy in Paris.
And yet other radical organizations may be linked to the cell. French authorities want to locate a man seen with Coulibaly’s widow, Hayat Boumeddiene, on CCTV footage after landing at Istanbul’s airport on 2 January. Her travelling companion has been identified as French-born Mehdi Belhouchine, 23, whose older brother was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in 2014 for his part in a network to recruit fighters for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Turkish officials confirm Boumeddiene crossed over into Syria; Belhouchine’s whereabouts have not been made clear.
Another piece that could aid French authorities in solving the puzzle may be in Bulgaria. Acting on a European arrest warrant, authorities there jailed Joachim Fritz-Joly, a reported friend of the younger Kouachi, as he tried to cross into Turkey.
At a court hearing on Tuesday, Joachim denied being part of a terrorist ring, saying, “a man can have friends and they can do whatever they want, but I am simply going on vacation and have nothing to do with it”.
He was ordered held until another hearing can determine whether he should be extradited by Bulgaria to France.



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more on this story














Paris attacks: four men face charges on suspicion of links to gunmen

Four suspects, all in their 20s, to appear before investigating judge on Tuesday, while five others released without charge



Published: 20 Jan 2015




Paris attacks: four men face charges on suspicion of links to gunmen












After the Paris attacks we’re in danger of abandoning the right to offend

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Published: 22 Jan 2015







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Charlie Hebdo gunman Chérif Kouachi buried in unmarked grave near Paris




Published: 18 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo gunman Chérif Kouachi buried in unmarked grave near Paris














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