Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Gunmen cut from familiar cloth
Paris killers shared characteristics with other radicalised young men
ONCE written off as teenage dropouts, Cherif and Said Kouachi seemed destined for a life of petty crime and drugs.
That was until they were influenced by an extreme Islamist ideology that set them on the path to becoming France’s most wanted men until they were killed by French police yesterday.
The French-born brothers shared depressingly familiar backgrounds; orphaned at a young age, they drifted into a life of drugs, petty offending and rap music – only to cast it off for radical Islam.
Branded a “scrawny pipsqueak and apprentice loser”, Cherif, 32, has been on the French security services’ radar for a decade, and was described as a “ticking timebomb”.
Having been radicalised by a charismatic cleric in Paris, he was arrested as he planned to travel to Iraq to become a jihadist in 2005.
He later became a student of Djamel Beghal, who attended the Finsbury Park mosque in north London when it was controlled by firebrand cleric Abu Hamza.
Meanwhile, Said, 34, was implicated in a 2010 plot to spring a notorious terrorist from prison.
The brothers were born in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, a nondescript district only a short distance from the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the magazine they are accused of attacking.
They were orphaned when their Algerian- born parents died while they were still young boys.
Cherif grew up in a children’s home in Brittany before returning to live in northern Paris.
Until the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003, he was typical of many of the young men from poor immigrant communities who live in the grim suburb circling the capital. Describing himself as “an occasional Muslim”, he smoked cannabis, drank, dealt drugs, chased women and got a job as a pizza delivery man.
A video shows him singing a rap song, wearing jeans, sunglasses and a baggy sweatshirt with a red baseball cap backwards on his head. He had a minor criminal record and was said to be more interested in pretty girls than the mosque.
But Cherif changed dramatically after he began worshipping at the Adda’wa mosque in Paris. Here he came under the influence of Imam Farid Benyettou, who was only a year older than him but already preaching an extremist ideology.
Cherif began attending prayer classes, grew a beard and started to watch jihadist videos. He would later tell a court he was particularly affected by reports on the abuse of Muslim prisoners by US troops at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Benyettou was at the heart of the Buttes Chaumont terror cell, named after the hilly park in north-eastern Paris where the group’s members trained.
The young would-be jihadists held strong convictions, but their preparations for going to war on the West were amateurish. They jogged around the park a few times to get fit, and were given one lesson in how to use an AK-47 using sketches of the rifle.
Nonetheless, the Buttes Chaumont group proved it was serious. It sent about a dozen young Parisian men, aged 25 or under, to Iraq. Most never returned.
Cherif also signed up to become a jihadist and made plans with a friend to catch the 6.45am flight from Paris to Syria on January 25, 2005. They were due to be met in Damascus by a 13-year-old boy, who would help them buy an AK-47 and then arrange their passage into Iraq.
But French police arrested Cherif on the day he was due to fly out.
His lawyer Vincent Ollivier, who defended him in 2008 when he was jailed on charges of abetting terrorist activites, described his client as a “scrawny pipsqueak” and an “apprentice loser”, suggesting he had simply got involved with the wrong crowd.
Cherif received a three-year jail sentence, but spent only 18 months behind bars. However, his time in custody at the tough Fleury- Mérogis Prison changed him dramatically.
He worked out in jail to make himself muscular, and became withdrawn.
Cherif was arrested again in May 2010 on suspicion of being part of a group that was planning to launch a prison break to free Smain Ali Belkacem, who was jailed for life over the bombing of a Paris railway station in 1995.
The French authorities eventually decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges against him.
Said was also mentioned during the case, but was never arrested. Far less is known about him, although he was mentioned in passing in documents relating to the 2010 plot to free Belkacem. An unverified Facebook page under his name, created in April, contains posts relating to radical Islam, along with images of bullets and weapons. – Daily Mail