French massacre suspect had terrorist past
One of the men sought for the brutal attack Wednesday on a Paris weekly newspaper served time in a French prison on a terrorism charge for his ties to an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group.
A Paris court in 2008 convicted Cherif Kouachi, then 26, for criminal association with a "terrorist enterprise." A judge sentenced Kouachi to three years in prison with 18 months suspended.
Police are searching for Kouachi, now 32, and his brother, Said, 34, two of the alleged AK-47-wielding gunmen who killed eight journalists, a security officer and a visitor at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo as they sat in an editorial meeting. The brothers and a third accomplice, identified by French police as Hamyd Mourad, 18, also allegedly killed a maintenance worker and a second policeman.
Witnesses said the men shouted the Islamic affirmation "Allahu Akbar" ("God Is Great") as they carried out the attack.
Kouachi and his brother are French citizens, born in Paris to parents of Algerian descent. Mourad's citizenship is unclear, but French news organizations reported that he attended a school in Charleville-Mezieres near Reims.
Cherif Kouachi had left school and was delivering pizzas in the 19th district, a working-class eastern Paris neighborhood that is home to many families of North African descent, when he met Farid Benyettou, a street preacher, court records show. Benyettou, a devout Muslim who identified with the conservative Salafist movement, recruited young men for the "19th Arrondissement Network," which wanted to send them to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Benyettou was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to six years in prison.
Prosecutors said the network recruited, trained and sent at least a dozen young French men to fight in Iraq for the insurgency. Police arrested Kouachi days before he planned to leave for Iraq via Syria.
Contributing: The Associated Press