Drugs, rap, booze: their path from hooligans to assassins
ONCE written off as teenage dropouts, Cherif and Said Kouachi seemed destined for a life of petty crime and drugs.
That was until their minds were warped by an extreme Islamist ideology that set them on the path to becoming France’s most wanted men.
Last night details emerged about the depressingly familiar backgrounds of the French-born brothers.
Orphaned at a young age, they drifted into a life of smoking 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.
Smoking cannabis and chasing women
The brothers were born in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, a nondescript district only a short distance from the offices of the magazine they are accused of targeting.
They were orphaned when their Algerianborn parents died while they were still young boys. Their parents are likely to have arrived in France after the bitter war of Algerian Independence which ended in 1962. 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 suburbs 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.
Cleric who warped Cherif’s mind
But Cherif changed dramatically after he began worshipping at the Adda’wa mosque in the Stalingrad district of 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 northeastern 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 laughably amateurish.
They jogged around the park a few times to get fit, and were given one lesson in how to use a Kalashnikov using sketches of the rifle.
The pipsqueak’s plot to wage holy war
Nonetheless, the Buttes Chaumont group proved it was deadly 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 a Kalashnikov for €200 (around £140) and then arrange their passage into Iraq.
But French police arrested Cherif on the day he was due to fly out.
Details emerged when he stood trial alongside six other men in 2008 accused of recruiting fighters in France for the insurgency in Iraq.
He claimed Benyettou had told him that religious texts proved the ‘benefits of suicide attacks’, adding: ‘It’s written in the texts that it’s good to die as a martyr.’
His lawyer Vincent Ollivier described his client as a ‘ scrawny pipsqueak’ and an ‘apprentice loser’ suggesting he had simply got involved with the wrong crowd.
Meetings in jail with a radical preacher
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 in the southern suburbs of Paris changed him dramatically. He worked out in jail to make himself muscular and became withdrawn. More significantly, he met Beghal, the senior terror leader who spent ten years in jail for planning attacks.
Beghal, formerly of Leicester, also attended London’s Finsbury Park mosque when it was controlled by hate preacher Abu Hamza, and is said to have met one of Osama bin Laden’s key deputies in Afghanistan.
After being freed from prison, Cherif was photographed by French intelligence visiting Beghal in Murat in central France in April 2010.
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 that there was not enough evidence to bring charges against him.
Said was also mentioned during the case but never arrested. It is unclear where the brothers received their military-style training.
But French intelligence sources have suggested that they may have learned to fight in Yemen while serving with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Yesterday leaders at Cherif’s local mosque revealed he once stormed out of prayers during France’s 2012 elections as he did not want to vote for an ‘infidel’.
Attaf Abdelbaki, the secretary to the president of the mosque, said: ‘He stood up and left the room.’
Speaking about Cherif’s upbringing he said: ‘We are talking about an orphan who clearly had personal and intellectual difficulties.’
Facebook pictures of bullets and weapons
Meanwhile, Cherif held down a series of jobs, including as a supermarket fishmonger and a market trader.
He married Izzana Hamyd in March 2008 in north-western Paris. They are believed to have at least one child.
The couple’s next- door neighbour, Eric Badday, 60, said Cherif tried to help him fix a broken door handle three days ago.
‘He was always helping old ladies with their groceries,’ said Mr Bade.
‘He was very, very muscular but I think they were poor. I saw inside their flat once and there were just mat- tresses on the floor, very little furniture.’ Said married Soumya Bouarfa in Paris in March 2012.
The couple have two children and lived on the first floor of a tower block in the city of Reims in northeastern France.
Kadir Sahroli, 76, who has lived in the building for 34 years, said: ‘He was always very kindly towards me.
‘We would pass each other in front of the building. He said hello.’
Far less is known about Said, although he was mentioned in passing in documents relating to the 2010 plot to free Belkacem from prison.
An unverified Facebook page under his name that was created in April last year contains posts relating to radical Islam, along with images of bullets and weapons.
Tracked by the French secret service
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio yesterday that both brothers were known to intelligence services and were probably being followed before the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices.
A third suspect named by French officials in the investigation into Wednesday’s attack handed himself into police later that evening.
Mourad Hamyd, 18, who is believed to be Cherif’s brother-in-law, gave himself up in the town of Charleville-Mezieres in northern France after seeing his name on social media.
One theory suggests that he was the getaway driver for the Kouachi brothers. But several of his school friends have claimed he was in class with them at the time of the attack.