12 Dead in Daytime Paris Attack at Satirical Magazine

[Peter Lemkin]

This is the Wiki version - thus the very much official version where any questioning of the official version or alternative ideas/theories/motives/etc. are not allowed. I post it because even with that caveat it contains some interesting features that may or may not be true - though many may well be. It contains a few elements of the official version I'd not seen before...

Saïd and Chérif Kouachi[edit]

[TABLE="class: infobox biography vcard, width: 22"]
[TR]
[TH="colspan: 2, align: center"]Saïd Kouachi[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"]Saïd Kouachi
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Born[/TH]
[TD]Saïd Kouachi
7 September 1980
Paris, France[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Died[/TH]
[TD]9 January 2015 (aged 34)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Cause of death
[/TH]
[TD]Gunshot wound[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Nationality[/TH]
[TD="class: category"]French[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Motive[/TH]
[TD]Jihadism[SUP][10][/SUP][SUP][11][/SUP][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="colspan: 2, align: center"]Killings[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Date[/TH]
[TD]79 January 2015[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Location(s)[/TH]
[TD]Charlie Hebdo offices[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Target(s)[/TH]
[TD]Charlie Hebdo staff[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Killed[/TH]
[TD]12[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Injured[/TH]
[TD]11[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Weapon(s)[/TH]
[TD]AK-47[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[TABLE="class: infobox biography vcard, width: 22"]
[TR]
[TH="colspan: 2, align: center"]Chérif Kouachi[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"]Chérif Kouachi
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Born[/TH]
[TD]Chérif Kouachi
29 November 1982
Paris, France[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Died[/TH]
[TD]9 January 2015 (aged 32)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Cause of death
[/TH]
[TD]Gunshot wound[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Nationality[/TH]
[TD="class: category"]French[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Motive[/TH]
[TD]Jihadism[SUP][10][/SUP][SUP][11][/SUP][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="colspan: 2, align: center"]Killings[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Date[/TH]
[TD]79 January 2015[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Location(s)[/TH]
[TD]Charlie Hebdo offices[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Target(s)[/TH]
[TD]Charlie Hebdo staff[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Killed[/TH]
[TD]12[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Injured[/TH]
[TD]11[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Weapon(s)[/TH]
[TD]AK-47[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
French police identified Saïd Kouachi (French pronunciation: ​[sa.id kwa.ʃi]; 7 September 1980 9 January 2015) and Chérif Kouachi ([ʃe.ʁif]; 29 November 1982 9 January 2015) as the main suspects of being the masked gunmen.[SUP][127][/SUP][SUP][128][/SUP] The two Muslim Franco-Algerian[SUP][127][/SUP][SUP][129][/SUP] French nationals,[SUP][130][/SUP][SUP][131][/SUP][SUP][132][/SUP] both fromGennevilliers, were aged 34 and 32 respectively.[SUP][127][/SUP][SUP][129][/SUP][SUP][133][/SUP][SUP][134][/SUP] Their parents were Algerian immigrants to France.[SUP][127][/SUP] The brothers were orphaned at a young age, and Chérif was raised in foster care in Rennes before he joined his brother in Paris.[SUP][133][/SUP]
Chérif, also known as Abu Issen, was part of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" (fr) (named after the Parc des Buttes Chaumont where they met and performed military-style training exercises) that helped send would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.[SUP][135][/SUP][SUP][136][/SUP] He was arrested at age 22 in January 2005 when he and another man were about to leave for Bashar al-Assad's Syria at the time a gateway for jihadists wishing to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.[SUP][137][/SUP] He went to Fleury-Mérogis Prison - Amedy Coulibaly met him in this prison.[SUP][138][/SUP] In prison together Kouachi and Coulibaly found a mentor, Djamel Beghal, who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison in France in 2001 for his part in a plot to bomb the United States embassy in Paris.[SUP][137][/SUP] Beghal had once been a regular worshipper at Finsbury Park mosque in London and a disciple of the radical preachers Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.
On leaving prison Chérif Kouachi married and got a fish counter job on the outskirts of Paris. He became a student of Farid Benyettou, a radical Muslim preacher at the Addawa Mosque in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Kouachi wanted to attack Jewish targets in France, but Benyettou told him that France, unlike Iraq, was not "a land of jihad".[SUP][139][/SUP]
In 2008, Chérif was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for having assisted in sending fighters to militantIslamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq, and for being part of a group that solicited young French Muslims to fight with Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.[SUP][127][/SUP][SUP][134][/SUP][SUP][140][/SUP] He said outrage at the torture of inmates of the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib inspired him to help Iraq's insurgency.[SUP][141][/SUP][SUP][142][/SUP]
French judicial documents said Amedy Coulibaly and Chérif Kouachi traveled with their wives in 2010 to central France to visit Djamel Beghal. In a 2010 police interview, Coulibaly identified Chérif as a friend he had met in prison and said they saw each other frequently.[SUP][143][/SUP] In 2010, the Kouachi brothers were named in connection with a plot to break out from jail another Islamist, Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem. They were not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. Belkacem was one of those responsible for the 1995 Paris Métro and RER bombings that killed eight people.[SUP][137][/SUP][SUP][144][/SUP]
From 2009 to 2010, Saïd Kouachi visited Yemen on a student visa to study at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language. There, according to a Yemeni reporter who interviewed Saïd, he met and befriended Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 later in 2009. The two shared an apartment for "one or two weeks".[SUP][145][/SUP][SUP][146][/SUP]
In 2011, Saïd returned to the country for a number of months and trained with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants.[SUP][147][/SUP] According to a senior Yemeni intelligence source, he met al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in the southern province of Shabwa.[SUP][148][/SUP] Chérif Kouachi told BFMTV that he had been funded by a network loyal to Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.[SUP][149][/SUP] According to U.S. officials, the U.S. provided France with intelligence in 2011 showing the brothers received training in Yemen. French authorities subsequently began monitoring them, but this surveillance of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi came to an end in the spring of 2014.[SUP][150][/SUP] In the time preceding the Charlie Hebdo attacks Saïd had been living with his wife and small children in a block of flats inReims and neighbours had described him as solitary.