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Charlie Hebdo attack



Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based









Djamel Beghal has been on western intelligence agencies’ radar for 15 years and has worshipped regularly at Finsbury Park mosque














Djamel Beghal is believed to have radicalised Chérif Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, in prison and to be one of al-Qaida’s leading recruiters in Europe. Photograph: Rex




Josh Halliday, 
Duncan Gardham and 
Julian Borger


Sunday 11 January 2015 16.33 EST







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Djamel Beghal, who has emerged as a mentor to two of the gunmen involved in last week’s attacks in Paris, has been on the radar of western intelligence agencies for more than 15 years.
The French-Algerian moved from France to Britain in 1997, and became a regular worshipper at London’s Finsbury Park mosque and a disciple of the radical preachers Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. He came to be seen by UK and French intelligence as one of al-Qaida’s leading recruiters in Europe.
He was back in the news last week after it emerged that he was one of the links between Chérif Kouachi, one of the brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages in a Paris kosher supermarket and also a policewoman.
French investigators believe Kouachi was radicalised by Beghal in prison, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris. Kouachi later visited Beghal when he was under house arrest in the Auvergne region of southern France. So did Coulibaly and his partner, Hayat Boumeddiene. She told police that they had gone there for “crossbow practice”.
Beghal left Algeria to study in France when he was 22. He married Sylvie, a French citizen, in 1990, while working as a youth worker and attempting to recruit Islamic converts in Corbeil-Essonnes, a small town on the river Seine south of Paris.
His first known contact with the authorities dates back to 1996, when he was questioned in France because his phone number had been found in the possession of a suspected terrorist. He was allowed to go free but remained under close surveillance in France.
In 1997, Beghal moved his family to Leicester, apparently earning money by making sandwiches and working for a homeless charity while studying information technology. But he made frequent trips to London and the Finsbury Park mosque.
According to legal documents in the case against Abu Qatada, who was deported from Britain after an 11-year battle, Beghal became an “extremist” under the influence of the preacher and was a member of a group involved in “distributing propaganda material” around Britain with Abu Qatada. Abu Qatada is also believed to have inspired him to move to Jalalabad in Afghanistan in November 2000.
When he was arrested at Abu Dhabi airport in July the next year, he claimed to have been travelling from Pakistan to Morocco with the wife and children of a friend. But he was suspected of returning to Europe to lead Osama bin Laden’s war on the west after a year of training with senior al-Qaida commanders in Afghanistan.
In a vivid account of his interrogation in Abu Dhabi given to the campaign group Cage in 2011, Beghal claimed he had been forced to endure deafening sounds and suffocating smells while being deprived of sleep, food and light.
Beghal said he had been interrogated and beaten by a British-accented agent who asked him solely about his connections with the UK. He said he was questioned about Leicester and prominent Muslims in London – chiefly Abu Qatada. “They wanted me to accuse Abu Qatada at any cost,” Beghal told Cage. “He would insist with brutality to reveal the link between Abu Qatada and Osama bin Laden, whom he called Abu Abdallah.”
Under interrogation, Beghal admitted to receiving training in Afghanistan, to meeting Abu Zubaydah – a key lieutenant of Bin Laden – and to travelling back to France to attack the US embassy in Paris.
Back in France he withdrew this confession but was convicted in March 2005 on terrorism charges and was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
He was released in 2009 but put under house arrest in the village of Murat, in the Auvergne, where he appears to have been visited by several aspiring jihadis including Kouachi and Coulibaly. They were all arrested in May 2010, accused of attempting to free Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, a convicted terrorist jailed for a 1995 bombing of the Paris metro.
Beghal’s wife, Sylvie, still lives in Leicester with their four children in a four-bedroom terraced house overlooking a park. She is mounting a supreme court challenge to anti-terrorist legislation after she was questioned by police on 4 January 2011 at East Midlands airport.
She was cautioned for failing to disclose information requested by officers under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
She pleaded guilty at Leicester magistrates court, but later brought unsuccessful appeals to the high court and court of appeal. In November 2014, she took her legal challenge to the supreme court, supported by the Muslim Council of Britain, Islamic Human Rights Commission and Cage.
In a statement after one court hearing, Sylvia Beghal said: “Once again my husband is punished for something he didn’t do … We just want to be left alone and live a peaceful life.”



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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








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








Paris unity rally: France on the march for fraternity and for freedom

Natalie Nougayrède in Paris




Published: 11 Jan 2015







Paris unity rally: France on the march for fraternity and for freedom
















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