Who are the militants who terrorised France for three days?
Publish Date: Jan 10, 2015
Publish Date: Jan 10, 2015
The moment special forces raided the grocery store yesterday. PHOTO BY AFP
PARIS, Saturday - The
men who terrorised France for three days had ties to Al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State group, and were well-known to French intelligence
services.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi carried out the massacre at the
offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine office Wednesday, killing 12, before
fleeing the capital.
They holed up with a hostage at a small printing firm north of
Paris on Friday before being killed by police commandos who stormed the
building.
Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman in Paris Thursday, a day
before taking several people hostage at a kosher supermarket in the east
of the city.
Speaking from the store he told French television he "coordinated" his attacks with the Kouachi brothers.
He, too, was killed when police launched an assault on the shop to end the siege, in which four hostages died.
His wife Hayat Boumeddiene is still being sought by police.
Cherif Kouachi
The 32-year-old Frenchman born in Paris to Algerian parents and
orphaned at a young age grew up in the east of the city not far from the
site of this week's magazine attack.
His history with jihadist networks dates back over a decade to his
days with the so-called Buttes Chaumont network, named after a park in
the 19th arrondissement of Paris where its members lived.
The group of young, radical Muslims helped arrange people's journeys to Iraq to join Al-Qaeda's fight US forces.
The younger Kouachi was 22 when the network was broken up by French
police. He was arrested just as he was about to fly to Syria in 2005,
from where he was due to travel on to fight in Iraq.
His lawyer at the time, Vincent Ollivier, said this week he was not particularly religious.
"He was a fairly typical, he smoked, drank and chased girls," said Ollivier.
At his trial in 2008, Kouachi said he was spurred to act by the
abuse of detainees by US troops at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, but was
relieved he did not have to go through with the trip.
He told the court he was working at a supermarket and his main
interest was rap music, not jihad, but was nonetheless sentenced to
three years in prison, half of which were suspended.
In prison he met Amedy Coulibaly and the pair came under the spell
of renowned jihadist Djamel Beghal, who served 10 years for trying to
break an Algerian Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, out of jail.
Kouachi was investigated in the prison break-out attempt but the case was later dropped.
Speaking by phone to French TV station BFM during the hostage
crisis on Friday, Cherif Kouachi said he travelled to Yemen in 2011 for
training -- a trip financed by American-Yemeni radical Anwar al-Awlaki
who was killed in Yemen by an American drone strike in September that
year.
Kouachi also knew Boubaker al-Hakim, a Franco-Tunisian fellow
member of the Buttes Chaumount network, who later joined Islamic State
and who claims to have killed two Tunisian politicians, Chokri Belaid
and Mohamed Brahmi, in 2013.
Said Kouachi
Cherif's 34-year-old brother was known by French intelligence to
have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received weapons training from
a local Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Said first visited Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2009 and spent time at
Al-Iman University, which was founded by fundamentalist cleric Abdel
Majid al-Zindani.
"He was disciplined, calm and discreet," said one former friend in Yemen.
Another friend said Said had helped defend another school in northern Yemen against an attack by Shia militants in 2013.
Both he and Cherif were on a US database of terror suspects and no-fly list.
Amedy Coulibaly
Couibaly was born in Essonne, south of Paris.
He worked on and off at a Coca-Cola factory between 2008 and 2010.
The 32-year-old petty criminal, who served time for robbery and
drug-related charges, is believed to have converted to radical Islam in
prison.
He too was involved in the attempt to free Belkacem.
He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in
the attempted escape, after 240 rounds of Kalashnikov ammunition were
found at his home, but he was a free man again by May 2014.
It was while in prison that Coulibaly met Cherif Kouachi and Djamel Beghal.
Like Cherif "he seemed to have a certain fascination for Djamel Beghal," prison documents said.
Hayat Boumeddiene
Boumeddiene, 26, married Coulibaly in a religious ceremony, but
they have not had the civil wedding required to make it official in
France.
Her mugshot was released by police along with that of Coulibaly in
connection with Thursday's shooting of the policewoman. Both were
described as "armed and dangerous".
She is still wanted by police.
AFP
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