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Charlie Hebdo attack



Charlie Hebdo suspect Cherif Kouachi linked to network of French militants









Man who led deadly attack on the satirical magazine had links to disorganised web of extremists for more than 10 years


Charlie Hebdo shooting – live coverage

Charlie Hebdo attack: what we know so far 














Cherif Kouachi had been jailed for his role in a network sending volunteers to fight alongside al-Qaida militants in Iraq. Photograph: AP




Jason Burke


Thursday 8 January 2015 13.42 EST







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The prime suspect in the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was an active member of a loose network of French militants, active for over two decades, that stretched from Syria to the UK.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, had been imprisoned for 18 months for his role in a network sending volunteers to fight alongside al-Qaida militants in Iraq between 2003 and 2005 and had been investigated for his involvement in a plan to break a veteran extremist out of prison in 2010.
The news of his previous record as an active extremist known to authorities will raise difficult questions for the French security services. Last night, a senior US counter-terrorism official told Associated Press that Kouachi and his older brother Said, 34, were known to authorities and were on America’s “no-fly” list.
The official said Said had traveled to Yemen, although it was unclear whether he was there to join up with extremist groups based there.
As the pair were being hunted by French police on Thursday night, the picture of Cherif Kouachi’s links to a disorganised web of extremists became clearer.
Individuals linked to the network are currently active in Syria and Libya. A jailed militant described by Le Monde  as Kouachi’s mentor was a key extremist organiser in the UK in the late 1990s and was connected to Abu Qatada, the London-based radical preacher deported after a long legal struggle to Jordan in 2013. Others are spread out across France. No hard evidence has yet emerged of any further connection to any overseas organisation, although the involvement of al-Qaida and its affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, have been suggested, along with Islamic State (Isis).
French intelligence services are understood to have told their UK counterparts that their initial investigation has found nothing indicating any connection with any of these, or any other, groups.
Investigators believe the weapons used in the assault may have been obtained from gangsters, possibly through connections made in prison.Manuel Valls, the French prime minister,  told French media “there is never zero risk”, adding: “The police and judicial services have dismantled numerous groups and blocked bomb plots. That’s proof that we are acting. Hundreds of people are followed, dozens have been questioned, dozens have been jailed. That shows the difficulties facing our services: the number of individuals who pose a threat,” he said.
French police and intelligence services were heavily criticised in 2012 after a 23-year-old French Muslim who had recently returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan went on a 10-day shooting spree, killing seven people. Kouachi, with a record of at least a decade of involvement in militant groups, would seem to have been an obvious target for surveillance.
An orphan of parents of Algerian origin living in the west of France, Kouachi grew up in Paris, earning a technical qualification as a sports instructor. In about 2003, he became involved in a notorious group known as the Buttes-Chaumont network, named after the park in north-east Paris where members met and undertook physical training.
Investigators say the network funnelled about a dozen French fighters to camps linked to an al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq. Three of the group’s members were killed in action, several more were captured there and three, including Kouachi, were arrested in France before leaving.
The network was broken up by French authorities in 2005 and the preacher accused of being its ringleader sentenced to six years in prison.
Kouachi, who had been working as a pizza delivery driver, told the court during the trial in 2008 that he had been motivated to travel to Iraq by images of atrocities committed by US troops in Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. Radical sermons by the group’s leader, a self-taught preacher, convinced him that violent “jihad” and suicide was an obligation according to Muslim holy texts.
Lawyers for Kouachi told the trial he was not an observant Muslim and had “smoked hash, drunk and had a girlfriend” before becoming involved with the Buttes-Chaumont group. Other members had been habitual petty criminals, the newspaper Libération reported at the time. “Before I was a delinquent. But after I felt great. I didn’t even imagine that I could die,” Kouachi told the court.
The former aspirant rapper was not a particularly enthusiastic warrior, however, and as the date to leave for Iraq via Syria approached, his concerns grew, he said.
Kouachi nonetheless ran with the other members of the group to get fit for combat, was given a brief account of how to handle a Kalashnikov assault rifle by a man he met in a mosque, and had bought a ticket to travel when he was arrested.
After serving 18 months of a three-year sentence, he was released and worked on the fish counter of a supermarket in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
In 2008, he married a devout Muslim woman who ran activities for toddlers in a creche. The couple lived in Gennevilliers, in the Hauts-de-Seine department.
However, his involvement in radical Islamic activism was not over and he remained in touch with other members of the Buttes-Chaumont gang.
According to Le Monde, Kouachi was placed under surveillance in 2010 when investigators discovered a plan to break out of prison the man who masterminded a bombing at a train station in Paris in 1995, which injured 30 people.
Kouachi was held for three months under strict French anti-terror laws before being freed for lack of evidence. Investigators believed his brother, Said, was also involved in the plot and said the network planning the breakout was led by Djamal Beghal, the mentor Kouachi had met when jailed previously.
Beghal, a French-Algerian who had lived in Leicester and London in the late 1990s, was detained in 2001 while returning from Afghanistan to France. Interrogation documents from the time reveal that he told investigators in the United Arab Emirates that Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary had given him the orders to bomb the US embassy in Paris. He later said he had been tortured.
Beghal, who was in close contact with Abu Qatada, was jailed for 10 years. In prison, he became a mentor to Kouachi, according to media reports in France. The two remained in contact: after Beghal’s release into a form of house arrest in 2010, the pair met and allegedly discussed the breakout plan. Security services moved in, but although they suspected Kouachi’s role they were unable to provide sufficient evidence to support charges against him.
Kouachi is also thought to have maintained links with former members of the Buttes-Chaumont group. One member, Boubakeur el-Hakim, recently surfaced in Tunisia, where he is believed to have killed a local politician. Others fought in Iraq alongside Salim Benghalem, who is described by the US government as a “Syria-based French extremist and [Islamic State] member who carries out executions on behalf of the group”.
Benghalem was also in touch with another member of the Buttes-Chaumont group involved in the breakout plot.
This web of associations, typical of contemporary militant activism, complicates the task of investigators looking to establish the origins of the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
“It is impossible that an operation on the scale of the one that led to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo was not sponsored by Daesh [an alternative name for Isis],” said Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on radical Islam at Paris’s Sciences Po university.
However, experts are split over the degree of professionalism shown by the attackers. Some of their tactics indicated a familiarity with weapons, but they were unclear of the magazine’s exact address and unfamiliar with its security systems. Al-Qaida and its affiliates have always stressed thorough reconnaissance of targets when training individuals.
As likely is a scenario involving a small number of principal actors – possibly only Kouachi and his brother – who were supported by the broader network built up over decades to execute a plan they had envisaged for almost as long. It is also possible that one or both of the attackers might have spent time with a militant group before returning to France and eventually acting on his own initiative.
A third suspect in the attack, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, surrendered to police in the northern town of Charleville-Mézières on Wednesday.



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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
















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