French terror attacks tied to same homegrown militant group

Buttes-Chaumont network was the link between Charlie Hebdo attackers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and the gunman who took hostages in Jewish supermarket.

Before the gunmen who terrorized France for three days were killed by police SWAT teams late Friday, they made one last attempt to have their voices heard.

In calls to a French television station, they claimed ties to Yemen’s Al Qaeda group and to the Islamic State fighting in Syria and Iraq. They also denied they were killers, fashioning themselves instead as avengers of those who insulted Islam’s revered prophet. 

Last words for men — brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly — who had a long history of militancy and told police negotiators they intended “to die as martyrs.” In their wake they left 10 journalists, three police officers and four hostages dead. 

A purported spokesperson for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) later praised the attacks, appearing to give credence to claims made to the television station by Chérif Kouachi, who said he had gone to Yemen on a trip financed by U.S.-born AQAP propagandist Anwar al Awlaki. 

Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in September 2011. 

Late Thursday, however, U.S. officials were telling CNN and the New York Times that it was Kouachi’s 34-year-old brother, Saïd, who had gone to Yemen. 

Morten Storm, a Danish convert to Islam who once travelled in radical circles before switching sides to spy for various intelligence services including the CIA, infiltrated AQAP around the time one of the Kouachi brothers purportedly attended a training camp. 

Storm told the Star he does not recall meeting anyone who resembled the Kouachis but he did encounter other French nationals, among converts and nationals of Algerian, Mauritanian and Moroccan heritage. 

“Awlaki had asked me in the past to get people from West with clean passports,” Storm said in a telephone interview from the U.K., where he now lives.

By 2011, AQAP’s training was greatly diminished, as the Arab Spring protests consumed the streets and the U.S. hunt for Awlaki intensified. 

“The drones were flying constantly over the sky searching for him,” Storm said. 

But he said AQAP was still operating “mobile training camps” in southern Yemen on the use of AK-47s, pistols and rocket-propelled grenades. 

The possible AQAP connection came as no surprise to security analysts, who in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo massacre noted how skilfully and precisely the gunmen carried out their attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine.

But it wasn’t clear until Friday morning that the fatal shooting of police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe in another district of Paris a day earlier was also part of the terror plot. 

Coulibaly, in a separate call to BFMTV, the French affiliate of CNN, confirmed the shootings had been “synchronized.” He was killed soon after when police stormed the Jewish supermarket where he had taken hostages. 

The search continues for Coulibaly’s girlfriend, 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene.

Coulibaly was connected to the Kouachi brothers through a network known as the Buttes-Chaumont, whose members were convicted of funnelling fighters into Iraqfollowing the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Le Monde newspaper reported Chérif Kouachi and Coulibaly were two of the most faithful followers of Djamel Beghal, a convicted terrorist Kouachi met in prison, where Beghal, who went by the nickname of Abu Hamza, was serving 10 years for plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy.

Although it is unclear if the group remains active, the connection between Coulibaly and the Kouachis raises fears that further attacks may take place in France or elsewhere.

Timothy Holman, who worked as an analyst for both Interpol and Swiss Federal Criminal Police, reports the group once had contact with as many as 50 people, although only a “small fraction” were involved in foreign fighter activities.

Chérif Kouachi — one of those convicted for being part of the effort to send French fighters abroad — was arrested in January 2005 as he purportedly was about to depart for Iraq himself.

The portrait of the youthful Kouachi is in stark contrast to the 32-year-old who vowed Friday he would be killed rather than captured. Paris lawyer Vincent Ollivier said he seemed like a “frightened young kid” at the time.

“He told me that he was relieved to be detained because he was frightened about the prospect of leaving to fight. But he did not want his associates to think he was a coward. I guess he knew that if he went to Iraq he would either be killed or would return severely mutilated,” Ollivier said in an interview Friday. 

“He seemed to me to be totally unaware of any genuine reason to go and fight in Iraq. He was just a scared youth who liked to smoke and drink and chase girls. He did not fit the profile of a jihadist at all.”

He came under suspicion again in 2010 in connection with a botched plot to break Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem out of prison. Belkacem is serving a life sentence for the 1995 attack on the Paris transport system that killed eight people and wounded 120.

Kouachi was held for three months under France’s strict anti-terrorism laws but released due to lack of evidence.

Le Monde reported police had surveillance photos showing Kouachi and Coulibaly visiting the home in southern France of Beghal, who was convicted last year in the jailbreak plot. The French newspaper posted other photos showing Coulibaly and Boumeddiene also with Beghal.

Source http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news/world/2015/01/09/french_hostagetakings_linked_to_same_militant_group.html