12 Dead in Daytime Paris Attack at Satirical Magazine

[Magda Hassan]

Personally, and I suppose it will sound ghoulish, and I don't mean it that way, but I want to know the name of the policeman shot dead outside the Charlie building, where and when he will be buried, with police honours etc -- just to know that this was true, as I tend to distrust what might arguably be seen as staged video clips.

Yes would be interesting. I did see photos of him identified as a Muslim and the irony of him being the first victim. (was he? Was he shot on the way in to the building or the way out?) His name is out there some where but I can't recall it just now.

I harbour a little doubt - a teensy weeny one - that the two gunmen outside the offices of Charlie Hedbo - may not be the same of the two Kouachi brothers. I say this only because we only have the authorities word for it that they are one and the same, and the disparity in the military professionalism in the attack itself followed by the complete clumsiness in the scape continues to niggle at me.

Yours in cynicism.

I have wondered this also. There seems to be like 2 stages to the event. The first one was swift and highly organised and calm. The second was a fiasco of misplaced IDs, unprepared getaway making it up as they went along lurching from one landmark to another blowing their cover. Ultimately cornered and no way out. They could have lived to fight another day if they had done it right.

[Magda Hassan]

CFR: French Admit To Following' Kouachi Brothers Before Magazine Shooting

January 9, 2015 By 21wire 8 Comments
BREAKING: Paris Double Siege Ends in Death of Suspects, New Anti-Semitic' and Al-Awlaki' Narratives[URL="http://wp.me/p3bwni-a1v"]

21st Century Wire[/URL] says…

As French authorities close in on the two fleeing suspects turned hostage-takers, skepticism is building around reports which indicated a vast dossier for each suspect, and how security services allowed the alleged suspects to roam free, plan and stage Wednesday's violent incident at Charlie Hebdo Magazine in Paris.

Going by the official narrative, which says that the two prime suspects announced by French police, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi were also responsible for Wednesday's attack, it seems as if the two terrorists' were being closely monitored and tracked by both French and US security services prior to the event…


HOSTAGE SIEGE: CTD' Building located in the town of Dammartin en Goele, just northeast of Paris.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) mouthpiece, Foreign Policy Magazine admitted as much on Thursday, stating:

"French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday that the suspects were "probably followed" prior to the shooting and that there apparently was no sign of an impending attack, according to Le Figaro. Indeed, both Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, were previously known to the authorities. Cherif was convicted by a French court in 2008 of trying to travel to Iraq to fight in that country's insurgent movement. Both brothers were named in a 2010 case in connection with a plot to spring an imprisoned Islamist from jail, according to the BBC. Because of a lack of evidence, neither brother was prosecuted."


Kouachi Brothers said by French Police to be responsible for Magazine Murders.
"According to CNN, citing an unnamed U.S. official, French intelligence has told their American counterparts that Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen in 2011 "on behalf of the al Qaeda affiliate there" and received weapons training from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."
"According to Yahoo News and reports in other American outlets, both brothers were viewed by American security officials as sufficiently serious threats to be placed on a no-fly list preventing them from traveling on commercial aircraft bound for and leaving the United States."

One of the brothers is also said by authorities to have served prison time in France on terrorism charges, and this unique profile raises the very real possibility that at least one could have been groomed as an informant.

US media are currently coalescing around a new set of talking points to confront this embarrassing aspect of the story, with the new talking point being, "It's impossible to keep track of all of these radicalized individuals, and more resources are needed to prevent attacks like this", which is being streamlined across all major media outlets today.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Based on the timing of the photos released by police and the professional contract/mercenary attributes of the attack, therefore, it is VERY UNLIKELY that the two suspects presented by French Police, Cherif and Said Kouachi, are the same men who carried out today's sophisticated attack. Note also the height and build of the shooters, and do not be surprised if the two suspects are short and look nothing like the tall, muscular-frame shooters depicted in news reports on Wednesday.

[David Guyatt]

The word "patsies" spring to mind.

Looks like others are catching on to the possibility that the two killers outside the office of Charlie Hebdo and the two brothers are not one and the same. And it t makes sense that, if it were a false flag event, they would not be one and the same. A patsy is always a requirement - especially dead ones.

[Albert Doyle]

There are certain powers that are overjoyed by this new confirmation of the polarization against the arabs. It justifies their existence, agenda, and methods.

[Peter Lemkin]

One victim killed in Charlie Hebdo attacks was Muslim police officer Ahmed Merabet

Ahmed Merabet was shot dead while he patrolling the area

Police have named the a police officer who was killed during anattack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo yesterday as Ahmed Merabet, 42, who happened to be patrolling the area at the time and is believed to Muslim.

Mr Merabet is seen in footage released by Reuters begging the gunmen to spare his life in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, where the offices of the publication are situated, before he was shot more than once. The man is survived by his wife.
After being shot the first time, the gunmen wearing balaclavas and holding Kalashnikov rifles are seen running past the police officer who had his hands up in surrender and shot in his direction again at point-blank range as he was lying on the pavement outside the offices.
The masked gunmen is heard asking the police officer "Do you want to kill me?" before he allegedly replied "No, it is OK chief" before one of them shot him a second time round amid an attack described as the worst in France in 50 years.
Another officer, Franck Brinsolaro, was also shot dead by the three attackers suspected to be brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who are in their early 30s, and the third suspect - who reportedly turned himself in to the police last night after seeing himself mentioned in the news - was named as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad.

Mr Brinsolaro, who was the police bodyguard of Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier and was sitting in the editorial room when the gunmen shot the cartoonists and journalists dead, is survived by his wife and two children.

[Magda Hassan]

That was it. Thanks Peter.

Over at the kosher deli the four victims were identified Saturday by the French Jewish publication JSSNEWS as being Yohan Cohen, age 22, Yoav Hattab, age 21, Philippe Braham and Francois Michel Saada.

[Magda Hassan]

Charlie Hebdo Attacker, Underwear Bomber Were Possible Roommates: CNN

Posted 7:42 AM, January 10, 2015, by CNN Wire, Updated at 07:43am, January 10, 2015
Cherif Kouachi, Said Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly were killed by security forces in raids in and around Paris, France Friday night, Jan. 9, 2015. The Kouachi brothers were killed following a hostage standoff at a printing shop in Dammartin-en-Goele. Coulibaly, a close associate of Amedy, was killed following a hostage standoff at a grocery near the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood of Paris. Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, remained at large. (Credit: French National Police/CNN)

New claims emerged Saturday linking one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers in France with the so-called underwear bomber, who sought to bring down a plane over Detroit in 2009.
The revelation which has not been confirmed by officials comes as French investigators seek to piece together the web of connections between three suspects killed Friday as two sieges came to a bloody end, and as the country comes to terms with three days of terror that left 17 victims dead.
The suspects killed were brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, authors of Wednesday's deadly attack on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo; and Amedy Coulibaly, suspected in the death of a French policewoman Thursday and the shootings and hostage-taking at a kosher supermarket Friday.
A woman also wanted over the policewoman's shooting, named as Hayat Boumeddiene, is still at large.
Investigators in France and the United States have been looking for evidence tying the Kouachi brothers to associates in terror networks such as al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate and ISIS.
A Yemeni journalist and researcher, Mohammed al-Kibsi, told CNN that he had met and spoken with Said Kouachi in Yemen in 2011 and 2012.
Kouachi, who was studying Arabic grammar, and Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab previously were roommates for one to two weeks in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, living in the same small apartment, al-Kibsi said.
Kouachi's residence was very near to the famous Al-Tabari School and he and AbdulMutallab used to pray together there, said al-Kibsi by telephone Saturday. It wasn't clear when they were roommates, but AbdulMutallab was arrested after the December 2009 attempted bombing.
U.S. officials have said Said Kouachi spent several months in Yemen in 2011, receiving weapons training and working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
But there has been no official confirmation as yet of the claim that he and AbdulMutallab, now serving a life sentence in the United States, were associates.
Nation relieved'
The attack at the Paris office of the Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead on Wednesday and shocked France.
"The nation is relieved tonight," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Friday after the two standoffs concluded.
But the French government's work is not over.
There's still a lot of healing to do, and questions to answer on how this happened and how to prevent future attacks. Meanwhile, police continue the hunt for Boumeddiene, Coulibaly's partner.
France will remain at a heightened security as investigations continue, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday after an emergency security meeting.
All necessary measures will also be taken to ensure the safety of people who attend a massive unity rally planned in Paris on Sunday, he said. Extra steps will also be taken to protect religious institutions.
European leaders including Britain's David Cameron, Germany's Angela Merkel and Spain's Mariano Rajoy will join French President François Hollande at the unity march. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will also attend, according to Russia's Foreign Ministry and Turkish semi-official news agency Anadolu.
A total of 1,100 French troops are currently deployed in the Paris region, alongside police forces, to increase security following the attacks, the Defense Ministry said Saturday. An additional 250 soldiers will be on duty Sunday for the march, the ministry said.
Altogether, nearly 1,900 French troops will take part in providing additional security across the country as part of the France's security alert system, known as Vigipirate.
The precautions may help to ease the nerves of a country left on edge by the wave of violence.
The targeting of the kosher grocery store has shaken Jewish communities in particular. And amid the heightened security concerns, the Grande Synagogue of Paris was closed Saturday for the first time since World War II.
Rabbi Jonas Jacquelin, who serves in a different synagogue, told CNN that an attack on one member of the Jewish community was felt by everyone else.
But, he said, it was important for his synagogue to stay open to demonstrate that the community is not afraid. "We have to show to the world, we have to show to our enemies that all of us are continuing to pray today as we are doing every week and every Shabbat nothing can disturb us," he said.
Two sieges
The flurry of deadly events Friday started in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the Kouachi brothers took refuge in a print shop in an industrial area after two days on the run.
Hours later, after a major police operation locked down the town, the brothers were dead and a man who'd been hiding out in the building was freed unharmed.
Not everyone was so lucky in the grocery store standoff, which unfolded simultaneously in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris.
Hollande said four hostages lost their lives. Coulibaly also was killed after police moved in to end the siege.
The four victims were identified Saturday by the French Jewish publication JSSNEWS as being Yohan Cohen, age 22, Yoav Hattab, age 21, Philippe Braham and Francois Michel Saada.
Israeli government sources told CNN that Hollande had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that 15 were rescued. The four hostages were killed by the gunman before police stormed the market, sources said.
One of the hostages, identified only as Marie, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that the gunman was heavily armed and that she was very happy to be alive.
"As soon as he got inside, he started shooting. He scared us because he told us: I am not afraid to die and he said either I die or I go to jail for 40 years. He knew this was his last day," she said.
Hollande called the Porte de Vincennes deaths an "anti-Semitic" act and urged citizens not to lash out against Muslims.
"Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion," he said. "Unity is our best weapon."
Ties to Islamist extremists?
While Said Kouachi is suspected of links to al Qaeda in Yemen, Cherif Kouachi has a long history of jihad and anti-Semitism, according to documents obtained by CNN. In a 400-page court record, he is described as wanting to go to Iraq through Syria "to go and combat the Americans."
Cherif Kouachi was a close associate of Coulibaly, a Western intelligence source told CNN.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for orchestrating the Charlie Hebdo attack, the founder of the magazine The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill, told CNN. CNN has not independently confirmed this claim.
A man claiming to be Amedy Coulibaly, the hostage-taker at the Paris grocery store, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that he belonged to the Islamist militant group ISIS.
The Western intelligence source said Coulibaly lived with Boumeddiene, his alleged accomplice in the police shooting.
Boumeddiene exchanged 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molin. The wife told investigators that her husband and Coulibaly knew each other well.
French media outlets AFP, iTele and Le Point reported that police released Hamyd Mourad, 18, who turned himself in Wednesday after seeing his name on social media in connection with the Charlie Hebdo attack.
What's next for the magazine?
Charlie Hebdo plans to go on even without its leader and cherished staffers. It's set to publish many extra copies of its latest edition next Wednesday.
"I don't know if I'm afraid anymore because I've seen fear. I was scared for my friends, and they are dead," said Patrick Pelloux, a columnist for the magazine.
He and many others are defiant.
"I know that they didn't want us to be quiet," Pelloux said of the slain colleagues. "They would be assassinated twice, if we remained silent."
Former Charlie Hebdo journalist Caroline Fourest said the magazine's remaining journalists were back at work, despite it being "amazingly hard." One of the attack survivors has drawn next week's cover, she told CNN.
And, she added, the extremists failed in their aims. They have made the name of Charlie Hebdo internationally famous, she said, at the same time as exposing their own weakness.
"The jihadists are so weak that they are afraid (of) cartoons. Can you imagine?" she said. "But the cartoons will defeat them."
http://ktla.com/2015/01/10/charlie-hebdo...mates-cnn/

[R.K. Locke]

The word "patsies" spring to mind.

Looks like others are catching on to the possibility that the two killers outside the office of Charlie Hebdo and the two brothers are not one and the same. And it t makes sense that, if it were a false flag event, they would not be one and the same. A patsy is always a requirement - especially dead ones.

Almost the same script as Boston, isn't it?

I also can't understand why there is no blood in the photo of the police officer who was apparently shot in the head. Has it been edited out of the footage? That's the only explanation that I can think of.

[Paul Rigby]

This year's Tour de France has been cancelled in favour of a Tour de Faux Drapeau, in the course of which a variety of speeding Arab and/or Muslim patsies, preferably with blue eyes and while being filmed, will self-detonate, hijack, and spree-shoot their way across the country, the better to facilitate a complete, er, military coup.

Who could find anything remotely suspicious about that?

[Peter Lemkin]

Not much talked about, but there is a massive man(really woman)hunt for the companion of the guy killed in the Kosher Store. She is out there somewhere, and according to the French Intel agency she made over 500 calls to the brothers from her mobile phone just last year. Tomorrow there will be about one million persons marching in Paris and more elsewhere in France....I just hope no one tries to attack the crowd...as the death toll could be high. Security will be very tight, they are basically calling up all Police and the Military for these marches. Le Pen has not been invited....which is causing some controversy.

Just did some internet searching...and it is now believed the woman Hayat Bourmeddiene is in Syria now...having left France some days ago [just after the shooting of the policewoman]. Very strange find....on the internet are photos of her in a hijab [sometimes firing weapons]...but there is also this photo below...not one I'd expect for a radical Muslim man or his mate!!! Something is very 'fishy' here....rotten in France, as Shakespeare would say. If she is in Syria, with radical Muslims, I hope they don't find this photo as easily as I did...for her sake.