At least 12 dead in Paris after attack on satirical newspaper

[Reality]

At least 12 dead in Paris after attack on satirical newspaper

By Nicholas Vinocur and Antony Paone
PARIS Wed Jan 7, 2015 10:46am EST

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(Reuters) - Hooded gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a weekly satirical magazine known for lampooning radical Islam, killing at least 12 people, including two police officers in the worst militant attack on French soil in recent decades.

One of the men was captured on video shouting "Allah!" as four shots rang out. Two assailants were then seen calmly leaving the scene.

A police union official said the assailants remained at liberty and there were fears of further attacks.

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is well known for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

President Francois Hollande rushed to the scene.

"An act of indescribable barbarity has just been committed today in Paris," he said. "Measures have been taken to find those responsible, they will be hunted for as long as it takes to catch them and bring them to justice."

A short amateur video broadcast by French television stations shows two hooded men outside the building. One of them sees a wounded policeman lying on the ground and strides over to him to shoot him dead at point-blank range. The two then walk over to a black saloon car and drive off.

In another clip on Television station iTELE, they are heard shouting: "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."

A police official said the gunmen fled towards the eastern Paris suburbs after holding up a car.

"There is a possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured," Police union official Rocco Contento said.

Sirens could be heard across Paris as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and department stores.

A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover in what it described as a Shariah edition.

On CNN, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the people of France have been stalwart allies of the United States in the fight against Islamic State, while acknowledging it was not yet clear who was responsible for the attack in Paris.

“But I can tell you that we have worked closely with the French in this effort to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL," he said, referring to another acronym identifying Islamic state, which embraces a radical and violent interpretation of Islam.

Another 20 people were injured in the attack, including four or five critically. Police union official Contento described the scene inside the offices as "carnage".

Ten members of the Charlie Hebdo staff died in the attack, prosecutors said. Sources at the weekly said the dead included co-founder Jean "Cabu" Cabut and editor-in-chief Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier

"About a half an hour ago two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs (rifles)," witness Benoit Bringer told TV station iTELE. "A few minutes later we heard lots of shots."

In a video shot by journalist Martin Boudot from a rooftop near the magazine's offices, a man can be heard screaming "Allah"; then followed the sound of three or four shots.

"They're coming out. There are two of them," says a new voice on the video as two men appear in the frame, then raise their arms in a shooting posture.

France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and is already on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.

"I am extremely angry. These are criminals, barbarians. They have sold their soul to hell. This is not freedom. This is not Islam and I hope the french will come out united at the end of this," said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the Drancy mosque in Paris's Seine-Saint-Denis northern suburb.

GUNMEN FLED

Dozens of police and emergency services were at the site as police secured a wide perimeter around the shooting site, where a Reuters reporter saw a car riddled with bullet holes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was among European leaders condemning the shooting.

"This abominable act is not only an attack on the lives of French citizens and their security. It is also an attack on freedom of speech and the press, core elements of our free democratic culture."

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists described the attack as a brazen assault on free expression.

The scale of the violence is appalling," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "Journalists must now stand together to send the message that such murderous attempts to silence us will not stand."

Late last year, a man shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") injured 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. French officials say several attacks were prevented in recent weeks and Valls has said France had "never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism".

While there was no immediate claim for the shooting, one supporter of Islamic State suggested in a tweet the image of Mohammed was the reason for the attack.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.

(Reporting By Brian Love, Sophie Louet, Alexandria Sage, Gerard Bon, Dominique Rodriguez and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by John Irish and Mark John; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

 

[Reality]

French police converge on village after Paris magazine attack suspects spotted

Security forces deploy in zone where Paris attack suspects spotted

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 08 January, 2015, 6:27pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 08 January, 2015, 10:50pm

Agencies in Paris

A police cordon surrounds a petrol station in Villers-Cotterets where the suspects were reportedly spotted north-east of Paris. Photo: Reuters

French anti-terrorism police converged on an area northeast of Paris on Thursday after two brothers suspected of being behind an attack on a satirical newspaper were spotted at a petrol station in the region.

France’s prime minister said on Thursday he feared the Islamist militants who killed 12 people could strike again as a manhunt for two men widened across the country.

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Two police sources said that the men were seen armed and wearing cagoules in a Renault Clio car at a petrol station on a secondary road in Villiers-Cotterets some 80 kilometres from the French capital.

Amid French media reports the men had abandoned their car, Bruno Fortier, the mayor of neighbouring Crépy-en-Valois, said helicopters were circling his town and police and anti-terrorism forces were deploying en masse.

“It’s an incessant waltz of police cars and trucks,” he told reporters, adding that he could not confirm reports the men were holed up in a house in the area.

A policewoman was killed in a shootout in Paris earlier in the day, but police sources could not immediately confirm a link with Wednesday’s killings at the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper that marked the worst attack on French soil for decades.

National leaders and allied states described the assault on Charlie Hebdo, known for its lampooning of Islam and other religions as well as politicians, as an assault on democracy. The bells of Notre-Dame cathedral rang out during a minute’s silence observed across France and beyond.

Rescue workers tend to a victim after a shooting in Montrouge, in the south of Paris on Thursday. Photo: AP

Many European newspapers either re-published Charlie Hebdo cartoons or mocked the killers with images of their own.

Montrouge Mayor Jean-Loup Metton said the policewoman and a colleague were attending a reported traffic accident when Thursday’s shooting occurred. Witnesses said the assailant fled in a Renault Clio and police sources said he wore a bullet-proof vest and had a handgun and assault rifle.

But one police officer at the scene told reporters he did not appear to resemble the Charlie Hebdo shooters.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls was asked on RTL radio after an emergency cabinet meeting with President Francois Hollande whether he feared a further attack.

“That question is entirely legitimate, that’s obviously our main concern, and that is why thousands of police and investigators have been mobilised to catch these individuals.”

Armed and dangerous

Police released photographs of the two French nationals still at large, calling them “armed and dangerous”: brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, both of whom were already under watch by security services.

Late on Wednesday, an 18-year-old man turned himself into police in Charleville-Mézières near the Belgian border as police carried out searches in Paris and the northeastern cities of Reims and Strasbourg. A legal source said he was the brother-in-law of one of the main suspects and French media quoted friends as saying he was in school at the moment of the attack.

French social media carried numerous reports of police helicopters across northern France. Police tightened security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and stores.

Police officers investigate a petrol station in Villers Cotteret, 80 kilometres northeast of Paris where the suspects were reportedly spotted. Photo: AP

There were scattered, unconfirmed reports of sightings of the assailants and police increased their presence at entry points to Paris. One police source talked of a type of “psychosis” setting in with various reports and rumours, but police had to take each of them seriously.

The defence ministry said it had brought in an additional 200 soldiers from parachute regiments across the country to Paris to take the number of military patrolling the capital’s streets to 850.

France held a day of mourning for journalists and police officers shot dead by black-hooded gunmen using Kalashnikov assault rifles. French tricolour flags flew at half mast.

Tens of thousands took part in vigils across France on Wednesday to defend freedom of speech, many wearing badges declaring “Je Suis Charlie” [I Am Charlie] in support of the newspaper and the principle of freedom of speech.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph depicted two masked gunman outside the doors of Charlie Hebdo saying to each other: “Be careful, they might have pens”. Many German newspapers republished Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

The attack raised questions of security in countries across the Western world and beyond. Muslim leaders condemned the shooting but some have expressed fears of a rise in anti-Islamic feeling in a country with a large Muslim population.

France’s Muslim Council called on all French Muslims to join the minute of silence and said it was issuing a call for “all Imams in all of France’s mosques to condemn violence and terrorism wherever it comes from in the strongest possible way.”

Police sources said the window of a kebab shop next to a mosque in the town of Villefrance-sur-Saone was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said there were no wounded.

Security services have long feared that nationals drawn into Islamist militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq could return to their home countries to launch attacks - though there is no suggestion that the two suspects named by police had actually fought in either of these countries.

Britain’s Cobra security committee met on Thursday. London’s transport network was target of an attack in 2005, four years after 9/11. There have been attacks in countries including Spain, Kenya, Nigeria, India and Pakistan that have raised fears in Europe.

Islamist militants have repeatedly threatened France with attacks over its military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, and the government reinforced its anti-terrorism laws last year.

A total of seven people had been arrested since the attack, he said. Police sources said they were mostly acquaintances of the two main suspects. One source said one of the brothers had been identified by his identity card, left in the getaway car.

Courting controversy

Cherif Kouachi served 18 months in prison on a charge of criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He was part of an Islamist cell enlisting French nationals from a mosque in eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq and arrested before leaving for Iraq himself.

The gunmen stormed the journal’s offices on Wednesday killing journalists, including its founder and its current editor-in-chief, and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” [God is Greatest]. They then escaped in a black car, shouting, according to one witness, that they had “avenged the Prophet”.

Charlie Hebdo has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would pay for its mockery.

Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer Richard Malka said the newspaper would be published next Wednesday with one million copies compared to its usual print run of 60,000.

Satire has deep historical roots in Europe where ridicule and irreverence are seen as a means of chipping away at the authority of sometimes self-aggrandising political and religious leaders and institutions. Governments have frequently jailed satirists and their targets have often sued, but the art is widely seen as one of the mainstays of a liberal democracy.

French writer Voltaire enraged many in 18th century France with caustic depictions of royalty and the Catholic Church. The German magazine Simplicissimus in its 70-year existence saw cartoonists jailed and fined for ridiculing figures from Kaiser Wilhelm to church leaders, Nazi grandees and communists.

“Freedom assassinated” wrote Le Figaro daily on its front page, while Le Parisien said: “They won’t kill freedom”.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.

 

[Reality]

Police hunt brothers named in slaughter of 12 at French magazine Charlie Hebdo

Huge manhunt in Paris continues for two brothers after three gunmen carry out bloody massacre 'to avenge Prophet Mohammed' after third attacker surrenders to police

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 07 January, 2015, 7:19pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 08 January, 2015, 5:41pm

Agencies in Paris

Photos released by French police of suspects Cherif Kouachi (left), 32, and his brother Said, 34, wanted for the attack at a satirical magazine in the Paris that killed 12 on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

The youngest of three French nationals being sought by police for a suspected Islamist militant attack that killed 12 people at a satirical magazine on Wednesday turned himself into police, an official at the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

This came as another gunman wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying an automatic rifle opened fire on police, seriously injuring two officers in southern Paris on Thursday. One person was detained but the authorities said it was too early to say if the shooting at Porte de Chatillon was linked to the Charlie Hebdo killings.

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The hooded attackers stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly known for lampooning Islam and other religions, in the most deadly militant attack on French soil in decades.

French police were still in a huge manhunt for two of the attackers who escaped by car after shooting dead some of France’s top cartoonists as well as two police officers.

Police issued a document to forces across the region naming the three as Said Kouachi, born in 1980, Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982, and Hamyd Mourad, born in 1996, who handed himself in to police.

Harry's take on the tragic events in Paris.

The police source said one of them had been identified by his identity card, which had been left in the getaway car.

An official at the Paris prosecutor’s office said Mourad had turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, some 230 kilometres northeast of Paris near the Belgium border.

BFM TV, citing unidentified sources, said the man had decided to go to the police after seeing his name in social media. It said other arrests had taken place in circles linked to the two brothers.

The Kouachi brothers were from the Paris region while Mourad was from the area of the northeastern city of Reims, the government source told reporters.

The police source said one of the brothers had previously been tried on terrorism charges.

Armed police during an operation in a suburb of Reims early on Thursday following the attack on satirical weekly magazine that left 12 dead. Photo: AFP

Cherif Kouachi was charged with criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005 after he was arrested before leaving for Iraq to join Islamist militants. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008, according to French media.

Police published pictures of the two brothers on Thursday morning calling for witnesses and describing the two men as “armed and dangerous”.

A police source said anti-terrorism police searching for the suspects had been preparing an operation in Reims, and that there had already been a number of searches at locations across the country as part of the investigation.

Journalists hold placard reading "I am Charlie" as they hold a minute's silence for the victims at the French news agency Agence France-Presse. Photo: AFP

A reporter in Reims saw anti-terrorism police secure a building before a forensics team entered an apartment there while dozens of residents looked on. They did not appear to be preparing a major raid.

Charlie Hebdo is well known for courting controversy with satirical attacks on religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed. The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State.

Firefighters carry an injured man on a stretcher in front of the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Photo: AFP

"An act of indescribable barbarity has just been committed today in Paris," President Francois Hollande said. "This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it." His government raised the alert level to the highest.

Amateur video broadcast by French media showed two hooded men outside the building.

One of them sees a wounded policeman lying on the ground and strides over to shoot him dead at point-blank range. The two then walk over to a black saloon car and drive off.

In another clip on television station iTELE, they were heard shouting: "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed."

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said everything was being done to "neutralise as quickly as possible the three criminals that committed this barbaric act".

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said security would be ramped up around the capital.

French police officers and forensic experts examine the car used by armed gunmen. Photo: AFP

US President Barack Obama led global condemnation of the shooting and offered US government help in tracking down the culptrits.Editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier was killed.

Ten journalists and two police officers were killed. Another 20 people were injured in the attack, including up to five critically.

Among those killed were editor-in-chief Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier, co-founder Jean "Cabu" Cabut and Bernard Maris, an economist who was among the paper's contributors and appeared regularly on French radio. France was already on alert after calls from militants to attack its citizens in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council of the Muslim faith, condemned an "immensely barbaric act also against democracy and freedom of the press" and said its perpetrators could not claim to be true Muslims.

Rico, a friend of Cabut, who joined the Paris vigil, said his friend had paid for people misunderstanding his humour.

"These attacks are only going to get worse. It’s like a tsunami, it won’t stop and what’s happening today will probably feed the National Front," he told reporters without giving his family name.

The far-right National Front has won support on discontent over immigration to France. Some fear Wednesday’s attack could be used to feed anti-Islamic agitation.

French far-right party Front National president Marine Le Pen. Photo: AFP

National Front leader Marine Le Pen said it was too early to draw political conclusions but added: "The increased terror threat linked to Islamic fundamentalism is a simple fact."

France last year reinforced its anti-terrorism laws and was on alert after calls from Islamist militants to attack its citizens and interests in reprisal for French military strikes on Islamist strongholds in the Middle East and Africa.

The last major attack in Paris was in the mid-1990s when the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a spate of attacks, including the bombing of a commuter train in 1995 which killed eight people and injured 150.

Associated Press, Reuters

 

[Reality]

The pen is mightier: cartoonists respond to massacre of Charlie Hebdo journalists

On Wednesday, two gunmen shot dead 10 journalists and staff at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent terror attack. Two policemen were also killed. In response, cartoonists all over the world drew out their pens and expressed their grief and outrage at a brutal attack on press freedom.

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 08 January, 2015, 12:36pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 08 January, 2015, 4:41pm

Staff Reporter

By Rob Tornoe, political cartoonist of the Philly Inquirer in the United States

By Harry Harrison, SCMP's cartoonist.

By graphic artist Lucille Clerc

By The Independent's political cartoonist Dave Brown

By Dave Pope at The Canberra Times

By Canadian political cartoonist Michael deAdder

By Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News

By Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune

By Indian editorial cartoonist Satish Acharya

By Turkish Twitter user @AteistSozler

By Dutch cartoonist Ruben L Oppenheimer

By news site BuzzFeed

By a Facebook user

Correction: One of the illustrations, by Lucille Clerc, was mistakenly attributed to British artist Banksy

 

[NewWorldRecord]

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Paris shooting at Charlie Hebdo office: how terrorist attack unfolded
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[GarvenDreis]

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[GarvenDreis]

French police detain 9 in massive hunt for 2 suspects

By LORI HINNANT and ANGELA CHARLTON
Jan. 8, 2015 2:21 PM EST

French riot officers patrol in Longpont, north of Paris, France, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015. Scattered gunfire and explosions shook France on Thursday as its frightened yet defiant citizens held a day of mourning for 12 people slain at a Paris newspaper. French police hunted down the two heavily armed brothers suspected in the massacre to make sure they don't strike again. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

PARIS (AP) — Frightened yet defiant, French residents held a day of mourning Thursday for 12 people slain at a Paris newspaper. French police hunted for the two heavily armed brothers suspected in the massacre, fearing they might strike again.

The two suspects — one a former pizza deliveryman who had a prior terror conviction and a fondness for rap —should be considered "armed and dangerous," French police said in a bulletin.

Ninety people have been questioned so far in the investigation and nine people close to the two suspects — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his 34-year-old brother Said Kouachi — were detained for further questioning, officials said.

Authorities extended France's maximum terror alert from Paris to the northern Picardie region, focusing on several towns that might be possible safe havens for the two suspects, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters.

French President Francois Hollande — joined by residents, tourists and Muslim leaders — called for tolerance after the country's worst terrorist attack in decades. At noon, the Paris metro came to a standstill and a crowd fell silent near Notre Dame cathedral to honor Wednesday's victims.

"France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty — and thus of resistance — breathed freely," Hollande said.

France's prime minister said the possibility of a new attack "is our main concern" and announced several overnight arrests. Tensions ran high in Paris, where 800 extra police patrolled schools, places of worship and transit hubs. Britain increased its security checks at ports and borders.

The satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and witnesses said the attackers claimed allegiance to al-Qaida in Yemen. Around the world, from Berlin to Bangkok, thousands filled squares and streets, holding up pens to defend freedom of speech and honor those killed in the massacre.

"The only thing we can do is to live fearlessly," wrote Kai Diekmann, editor in chief of Bild, Germany's biggest-selling daily. "Our colleagues in Paris have paid the ultimate price for freedom. We bow before them."

Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in Wednesday's newspaper attack and 11 people were wounded, four of them critically. The publication had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures.

Said Kouachi had lived in Reims, in the Champagne region, and police searched the apartment on Wednesday. Video showed technicians taking samples, likely fingerprints.

By Thursday afternoon, authorities focused their search around the towns Villers-Cotterets and Crepy-en-Valois northeast of Paris, according to an official with the national gendarme service.

Two men resembling the suspects robbed a gas station in Villers-Cotterets early Thursday, and police swarmed the site while helicopters hovered above. Later large numbers of special police units arrived in Crepy-en-Valois amid reports the suspects had holed up there. However, the gendarme official later said the men had not yet been located.

A third suspect, Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station after hearing his name linked to the attacks, a Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman said. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.

One French police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, said the suspects were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. And a witness, Cedric Le Bechec, wrote on Facebook that the attackers said as they were fleeing "Tell the media that it's al-Qaida in Yemen."

The governor of a southern province in Yemen told The Associated Press on Thursday that four French citizens had been deported from Yemen in the last four months. Gov. Ahmed Abdullah al-Majidi said he didn't have their names and there was no confirmed link between those deportations and the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Two explosions hit near mosques in France early Thursday, raising fears the deadly attack at Charlie Hebdo was igniting a backlash against France's large and diverse Muslim community. No one was injured in the attacks, one in Le Mans southwest of Paris and another in Villefranche-sur-Saone, near Lyon, southeast of the capital.

France's top security official, meanwhile, abandoned a top-level meeting to rush to a shooting on the city's southern edge that killed a policewoman. The shooter remained at large. Cazeneuve said no links were established to the newspaper killings at this stage.

Fears have run high in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

Both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have repeatedly threatened to attack France, which is conducting airstrikes against extremists in Iraq and fighting Islamic militants in Africa.

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of those slain, was specifically threatened in a 2013 edition of the al-Qaida magazine Inspire. A caricature of Islamic State's leader was the last tweet sent out by the satirical newspaper, minutes before the attack. Its feed has since gone silent.

One witness to Wednesday's attack said the gunmen were so methodical he at first mistook them for an elite anti-terrorism squad. Then they fired on a police officer. Once inside the building, the gunmen headed straight for Charbonnier, killing him and his police bodyguard first. Shouting "Allahu akbar!" as they fired, the killers then called out the names of other employees.

In Tunisia, the birthplace of one of the slain cartoonists, Georges Wolinski, dozens paid homage in a candlelight vigil outside the French ambassador's residence.

"These people were executed at point-blank range just because of drawings — drawings that didn't please everyone and provoked anger and controversy but still were just drawings," said journalist Marouen Achouri.

___

Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Ahmed Al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, Thomas Adamson, Jamey Keaten and Philippe Sotto in Paris, Chris van den Hond in Crepy-en-Valois and Michel Spingler in Villers-Cotterets contributed to this report.

 

[GarvenDreis]

Armed gendarmes swoop on French villages in manhunt for Charlie Hebdo attackers

Search involving thousands of police continues in rural France for the killers of 12 at the offices of satirical newspaper as the publication plans to print 1 million copies of next edition

PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 10:04am
UPDATED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 10:26am

Reuters in Corcy

French police officers patrol north of Paris during the manhunt for the gunmen in the shooting at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo headquarters on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Armed and masked anti-terrorism police swooped on woodland villages northeast of Paris on Thursday in a manhunt for two brothers suspected of being the Islamist gunmen who killed 12 people at a French satirical weekly.

A day after the Paris attack, officers carried out house-to-house searches in the village of Corcy, a few kilometres from a service station where police sources said the brothers were sighted in ski masks. Helicopters flew overhead.

The fugitive suspects are French-born sons of Algerian-born parents, both in their early 30s, and already under police surveillance. One was jailed for 18 months for trying to travel to Iraq a decade ago to fight as part of an Islamist cell. Police said they were “armed and dangerous”.

United States and European sources close to the investigation said on Thursday that one of the brothers, Said Kouachi, was in Yemen in 2011 for a number of months training with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the group’s most active affiliates.

A Yemeni official familiar with the matter said the Yemen government was aware of the possibility of a connection between Said Kouachi and AQAP, and was looking into any possible links.

US government sources said Said Kouachi and his brother Cherif Kouachi were listed in two US security databases, a highly classified database containing information on 1.2 million possible counter-terrorism suspects, called TIDE, and the much smaller “no fly” list maintained by the Terrorist Screening Centre, an interagency unit.

US television network ABC reported that the brothers had been listed in the databases for “years”.

Dave Joly, a spokesman for the Terrorist Screening Centre, said he could neither confirm nor deny if the Kouachis were listed in counter-terrorism databases.

Watch: Warning - Video contains scenes of violence

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On Thursday, US President Barack Obama made an unannounced visit to the French Embassy in Washington to pay his respects.

He wrote in a condolence book, “As allies across the centuries, we stand united with our French brothers to ensure that justice is done and our way of life is defended. We go forward together knowing that terror is no match for freedom and ideals we stand for – ideals that light the world.”

In Paris, a policewoman was killed in a shootout with a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest on Thursday morning, setting a tense nation further on edge. Police sources were unable to say whether that incident was linked to the previous day’s assault at the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper, but the authorities opened another terrorism investigation.

The newspaper’s lawyer Richard Malka said Charlie Hebdo would be published next Wednesday with one million copies compared to its usual print run of 60,000.

Bewildered and tearful French people held a national day of mourning. The bells of Notre Dame pealed for those killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a left-leaning publication whose cartoonists have been national figures since the Parisian counter-cultural heyday of the 1960s and 1970s.

The newspaper had been firebombed in the past for printing cartoons that poked fun at militant Islam and some that mocked the Prophet Mohammed himself. Two of those killed were police posted to protect the paper.

While world leaders described the attack as an assault on democracy, al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch praised the gunmen as “knight of truth”.

Police patrol along a main street in Paris, France following the attack. Photo: Xinhua

Many European newspapers either re-published Charlie Hebdo cartoons or lampooned the killers with images of their own.

Searches were taking place in Corcy and the nearby village of Longpont, set in thick forest and boggy marshland about 70 kilometres north of Paris, but it was not clear whether the fugitives who had been spotted in the area were holed up or had moved on.

“We have not found them, there is no siege,” an interior ministry official in Paris said.

Corcy residents looked bewildered as heavily armed policeman in ski masks and helmets combed the village meticulously from houses to garages and barns.

“We’re hearing that the men could be in the forest, but there’s no information so we’re watching television to see,” said Corcy villager Jacques.

In neighbouring Longpont, a resident said police had told villagers to stay indoors because the gunmen may have abandoned their car there. Anti-terrorism officers pulled back as darkness fell.

French Prime minister Manuel Valls speaks at the Elysee Palace on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Thursday’s shooting of the policewoman on the streets of Paris’s southern Montrouge district – whether related or not – caused more fear. Montrouge Mayor Jean-Loup Metton said the policewoman and a colleague came under fire while responding to a reported traffic accident. Witnesses said the assailant fled in a Renault Clio. Police sources said he wore a bullet-proof vest and had an assault rifle and a handgun.

A police officer at the scene said he did not appear to resemble the Charlie Hebdo shooting suspects.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls, asked on RTL radio whether he feared a further attack, said: “That’s obviously our main concern and that is why thousands of police and investigators have been mobilised to catch these individuals.”

Police released photographs of the two suspects, Cherif and Said Kouachi, 32 and 34. The brothers were born in eastern Paris and grew up in an orphanage in the western city of Rennes after their parents died.

The younger brother’s jail sentence for trying to fight in Iraq a decade ago, and more recent tangles with the authorities over suspected involvement in militant plots, raised questions over whether police could have done more to watch them.

Cherif Kouachi was arrested on January 25, 2005 preparing to fly to Syria en route to Iraq. He served 18 months of a three-year sentence.

The Eiffel Tower lights were switched off for six minutes as a tribute to the victims on Thursday night. Photo: EPA

“He was part of a group of young people who were a little lost, confused, not really fanatics in the proper sense of the word,” lawyer Vincent Ollivier, who represented Cherif in the case, told Liberation daily.

In 2010 he was suspected of being part of a group that tried to break from prison Smain Ali Belkacem, a militant jailed for the 1995 bombings of Paris train and metro stations that killed eight people and wounded 120. The case against Cherif Kouachi was dismissed for lack of evidence.

A third person wanted by police, an 18-year-old man, turned himself into police in Charleville-Mézières near the Belgian border late on Wednesday. A legal source said he was the brother-in-law of one of the brothers. French media quoted friends as saying he was in school at the time of the attack.

In the wake of the killings, authorities tightened security at transport hubs, religious sites, media offices and stores. Police also increased their presence at entry points to Paris.

At Porte d’Orleans, one of the capital’s main gateways, more than a dozen white police vans lined up the main avenue. Officers stood guard with bulletproof jackets and rifles.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zksRgDmctEc?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The defence ministry said it sent 200 extra soldiers from parachute regiments across the country to help guard Paris.

Tens of thousands of people attended vigils across France on Wednesday, many wearing badges declaring “Je suis Charlie” in support of the newspaper and the principle of freedom of speech.

Newspapers in many countries republished Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Britain’s Daily Telegraph depicted two masked gunmen outside the doors of Charlie Hebdo saying to each other: “Be careful, they might have pens”

Muslim leaders condemned the shooting, but some have expressed fears of a rise in anti-Islamic feeling in a country with a large Muslim population. The window of a kebab shop next to a mosque in the town of Villefrance-sur-Saone was blown out by an overnight explosion. Local media said no one was hurt.

 

[GarvenDreis]

Inside massacre newsroom: Chilling image reveals blood-soaked papers strewn across Charlie Hebdo office after 12 were shot dead

• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
  
• Chilling image from building in Paris shows blood-stained wooden floors and papers strewn across the corridor
• Horrific footage shows officer Ahmed Merabet - believed to be Muslim - being shot in the head at point-blank range
• The 42-year-old married officer seen raising his hand in an appeal for mercy, as he lies wounded on the pavement
• Masked gunmen stormed Charlie Hebdo magazines headquarters in Paris with AK-47s shouting 'Allahu akbar!'
• They stalked building asking for people's names before killing editor, three cartoonists and the deputy chief editor
• Militants believed to be from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which was behind plane bomb plots in US and UK
• Three suspects said to be all French citizens - a homeless teenage man aged 18, and two brothers aged 32 and 34
• Gunmen identified as Said Kouachi, 34, and his brother Cherif, 32, as well as Hamyd Mourad, 18, from Reims
• Mourad surrendered to police 'after seeing his name on social media' and was arrested, source close to case said
• Britain offered for MI5 and MI6 to join hunt as border guards were on high alert for suspects attempting to flee to UK

By Mark Duell for MailOnline and Paul Bentley and David Williams and Claire Duffin In Paris For The Daily Mail
Published: 18:51 GMT, 8 January 2015 | Updated: 02:37 GMT, 9 January 2015

With blood spilt on sketch papers and stained in footprints on the floor, this is the awful aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The first photograph of the office shows the utter devastation caused when Islamic fanatics stormed the magazine’s offices as its journalists met to discuss a conference on racism.

In the chaos which followed, the office was turned upside down. This shocking image was published online last night by France’s Le Monde newspaper.

Shocking: The chilling image from the Charlie Hebdo office shows blood-stained wooden floors, papers strewn across the corridor

Six of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and staff members killed in Wednesday's attack are pictured together in this photo, taken in 2000. Circled top from left is Philippe Honore, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Maris and Jean Cabut. Below them on the stairs, from left, is editor Stephane Charbonnier and cartoonist Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac

Members of the French police special force GIPN carry out searches in Corcy, northern France, as part of an investigation into the attack

Armed: Members of the GIPN and RAID, French police special forces, walk in Corcy, northern France, as they carry out searches as part of an investigation into a deadly attack the day before by armed gunmen on the Paris offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo

Special forces: Members of the GIPN walk in Corcy, northern France, carry out searches as part of the investigation

The picture was taken at the office of Charlie Hebdo at No 10, Rue Nicolas-Appert in the historic Le Marais district of Paris.

The photograph shows chairs overturned by a large puddle of blood, under five cartoons stuck to the wall. Someone’s jacket is still hanging over the back of a chair, beside a discarded mug.

Papers can be seen strewn across the ground, covered in the blood of those who had been working on them hours earlier.

Newspapers and books can also be seen on the floor, while some appear to have been sketched on. In the mayhem, they appear to have been trampled on, with blood-covered shoes staining them red.

And like countless other offices, notes and cards adorn a corridor wall. But here, police tape has also been attached to a door.

One of the cartoons on the wall appears to be the sketch for the controversial ‘Sharia Hebdo’ front page, which sparked the previous terrorist attack in November 2011.

The firebomb – which destroyed the magazine’s computer system but failed to injure anyone – came after the publication ran an issue supposedly guest-edited by Mohammed, containing cartoons of the Muslim prophet and the slogan: ‘100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter’.

After the attack the publication responded in the way it knows best.

Target: After halting their car, the terrorists fire assault rifles at a policeman who tried to stop them, following the massacre at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris

Helpless: The gunmen move in on the officer as Ahmed Merabet - who is believed to have been a Muslim - lies wounded on the pavement

Pleading: Mr Merabet, 42, who was married, raises his hand in an appeal for mercy as the terrorists approach him with their weapons

Callous: One of the terrorists fires at the officer at point-blank range. The attack took place on Wednesday and killed 12 people

Killing: Leaving the 42-year-old married officer to die, they run off, sparking a massive manhunt which was continuing last night

On the front of its next edition, it ran a cartoon of a French illustrator passionately kissing a bearded Muslim, with the headline ‘L’amour plus fort que la haine’ (‘Love is stronger than hate’).

And despite the fact that the attack forced him to live under police guard, editor Stephane Charbonnier, 47, who was murdered on Wednesday, said at the time: ‘I am not afraid of retaliation. I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.’

PHOTOS SHOWING SHOCKING MURDER OF POLICE OFFICER

These shocking images were broadcast all over the world on Wednesday. We appreciate they may distress some readers, but believe they must be published so the sheer brutality and horror of what happened may be fully understood. Out of respect for the murdered officer and his family, his face has been obscured.

Yesterday, the magazine continued to show its defiance, announcing that it would run a special edition next week – and would massively increase its print run, from 60,000 copies to one million.

Amid speculation that the cover image could be more provocative than ever, former editor Philippe Val declared: ‘We will never stop laughing. We must let people laugh. We must let them ridicule the bastards.’

Yesterday the Charlie Hebdo staff who survived pledged to create next week’s edition in memory of their colleagues and ‘write it with our tears’. The issue will be eight pages, rather than the usual 16.

Other media outlets in France said they would give the journalists all the equipment and resources they need.

The magazine is due to be published on Wednesday, a week after the Al Qaeda terrorists attacked their offices, killing a guest editor, three cartoonists, two columnists, a sub-editor and Mr Charbonnier.

Mr Val, who edited the magazine before Mr Charbonnier and was his mentor, said yesterday: ‘We have laughed so much, we must continue to laugh. It is difficult today but it’s the absolute weapon, laughing.’

He went on to describe the attack as an ‘act of war’, adding: ‘Our country will never be the same.

‘A certain kind of journalism has been wiped out. Those who have been exterminated were all people capable of causing laughter with serious ideas.’

Suspects: The three men were named as Cherif Kouachi (left), 32, his brother Said Kouachi (right), 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18, of Gennevilliers

A raid by France’s elite anti-terrorist unit took place late Wednesday in Reims as part of the hunt for the gunmen who attacked the newspaper

Either the suspects will be able to escape, or ‘there will be a showdown’, said a member of the unit, urging reporters at the scene to be ‘vigilant'

He went on to say: ‘It’s a terrible grief that falls on us, but we can’t let silence win.

LAST TWEET BEFORE SLAUGHTER

Just one hour before the attack, the magazine’s web editor Simon Fieschi tweeted a cartoon mocking Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In the massacre which followed, he was shot – but survived. Yesterday, Mr Fieschi’s girlfriend spoke of his family’s horror but also their overwhelming relief that he was not killed.

They now face an agonising wait to discover if he has been paralysed after he called his mother during the attack, saying he had survived but could not feel his body. Mr Fieschi, 31, was subsequently put into an induced coma at a Paris hospital.

His Australian fiancee – who was visiting family in Sydney at the time – was last night flying across the world to be at his bedside.

Before she boarded the flight, Maisie Dubosarsky, 28, said: ‘I’m scared to see him. He is still in the coma. I was so happy because he wasn’t dead. Now, realising that he might not walk again, it’s terrible. I just wish it wasn’t real.’

‘Terrorism must not get in the way of the joy of living, the freedom of expression. We must say what we feel, we must say what we think.

‘We will never accept this, that we will never stop laughing. Our freedom, we can’t abandon that.’

Paying tribute to his colleagues, he said: ‘Today I am practically all alone, all my friends are gone.

‘And this was not for a bad cause, it was so that we all could live, so that kids were free to come and go, and say silly things, without danger. I’m in very bad shape. But that’s normal, right? I lost all my friends.

‘They were absolutely wonderful people. They cared so much about bringing joy to people, making them laugh. They were people who just wanted to live happily, who wanted to grant humour its place in life. That’s all, it’s just that, and that’s what’s been murdered.’

Columnist Patrick Pelloux said their work had to continue to show ‘stupidity will not win’. He explained that as Charlie Hebdo’s offices were not accessible, they would produce it elsewhere.

‘It’s very hard,’ he said. ‘We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway.

‘They were extraordinary men and women. They were killed during a meeting discussing a conference on the fight against racism. Voila.

‘The magazine will continue. We won’t stop. We have to put together an even better paper, I don’t know how. But we’ll do it. We’ll write it with our tears, but we’ll write it. We don’t have the right to give in.’

Police believe they have tracked down the brothers to a remote area about 50 miles north-east of Paris after reportedly robbing a nearby petrol station.

Officers are said to have found a Molotov cocktail bomb and jihadist flag in the car of Cherif and Said Kouachi, which they abandoned before fleeing.

The men, still armed, headed on foot into the vast Forêt de Retz (Retz Forest) that measures 32,000 acres, an area roughly the size of Paris.

The office picture was released following images showing the moment that a murdered police officer pleaded for his life before being executed.

Faces of the victims: Among the journalists killed were (l to r) Charlie Hebdo's deputy chief editor Bernard Maris and cartoonists Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut, aka Cabu, Stephane Charbonnier, who is also editor-in-chief, and Bernard Verlhac, also known as Tignous

Emergency: Police officers and firefighters gathered in front of the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris after gunmen stormed the building

Critical: Firefighters carried an injured man on a stretcher in front of the offices of French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo after the shooting

Last night: French forensic experts and police officers examine evidence outside the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo's office, in Paris

A police photographer (partially hidden) works with investigators as they examine the impacts from machine gun fire on a police vehicle

A video from the scene of Wednesday's massacre shows officer Ahmed Merabet - believed to be a Muslim - lying wounded on the pavement and begging for mercy before being shot at point-blank range by the terrorists.

As they approach, the 42-year-old is seen raising his hand in appeal for mercy, before asking: ‘Do you want to kill me?’ The gunman then answers: ‘OK chief’ before shooting him through the head with the assault rifle.

The gunmen then return to the car driven by an accomplice, sparking a massive manhunt which was continuing last night.

The shocking images were broadcast all over the world, depicting the sheer brutality of the horror that unfolded in the attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, in which 12 innocent people were killed.

Among the victims, the Al Qaeda assassins – identified as two brothers and an 18-year-old accomplice, all with Algerian links – shot dead two policemen.

The massacre was condemned around the world as an assault on freedom of speech. The magazine, which mocks politicians and religions alike, was firebombed in 2011 after carrying a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed.

Targeted: A picture posted on Twitter reportedly showing bullets in one of the windows of the Charlie Hebdo offices

High alert: French soldiers patrol at the Eiffel Tower after the Charlie Hebdo shooting as the militants are hunted across the city

French soldiers disembark at Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris, as part of a deployment of soldiers to enhance security in Paris last night

'WE SHOULD NEVER GIVE UP THE VALUES WE BELIEVE IN': DAVID CAMERON SAYS FREEDOM WILL BEAT TERRORISTS

David Cameron and Angela Merkel were given an extremely rare joint briefing by British intelligence chiefs on the terror threat last night.

MI5 chief Andrew Parker and MI6 boss Alex Younger told the two leaders the Paris attacks appeared to be of a ‘professional’ type not seen in Britain in recent years. The two leaders then made a call to Francois Hollande during which Mr Cameron offered the French president use of British spies to help track down the fanatics.

In a joint press conference in London, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor said terrorists must never be allowed to stop free speech. Mr Cameron said: ‘We should never give up the values we believe in and defend as part of our democracy and civilisation – believing in a free Press, in freedom of expression, in the right of people to write and say what they believe.

‘These are the things we are defending.’

Nine of its staff were killed in Wednesday's atrocity, including the editor and three cartoonists. It was France’s worst terror attack since 1961.

Opposition MP Jacques Myard said: ‘We are at war, the Western nations – like Britain, France and Germany.’

The hooded, heavily armed gunmen – described by police as operating like a commando unit – told witnesses they were from Al Qaeda and trained in Yemen.

Last night the Paris outrage was being seen as the ‘spectacular’ that Al Qaeda had been threatening since the dramatic rise of Islamic State replaced it as the most feared jihadi organisation.

The suspects were named as Said Kouachi, 34, his brother Cherif, 32, and Hamyd Mourad, 18.

A police operation took place late lat night the north-eastern city of Reims, where Said lived.

Early this morning, a source close to the case said Mourad surrendered to police 'after seeing his name on social media' and was arrested at an undisclosed location.

Vigil: People gathered around candles and pens at the Place de la Republique in Paris in support of the victims after the terrorist attack

Dozens of members of the elite anti-terror unit were surrounding an apartment building.

The Kouachi brothers hailed from the Paris suburb of Pantin, where Cherif still lived.

He was convicted in 2008 and jailed for three years for his association with a group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq.

Hamyd is believed to have been living recently in Charleville-Mezieres, in the French Ardennes. All three men had Algerian origins.

The massacre at the second-floor offices of the magazine in the heart of the French capital appeared well planned with gunmen calling out names of journalists and cartoonists before shooting them.

Police union official Rocco Contento warned: ‘There is a possibility of other attacks and other sites are being secured.’

As soldiers took to the streets of Paris:

• President Francois Hollande called the attack one ‘of exceptional barbarity’;
• Barack Obama described it as cowardly;
• Thousands took to the streets of Paris in support of those killed;
• It was feared the death toll would rise with five of the dozen injured on the critical list;
• Britain offered help as MI5 and MI6 joined the manhunt;
• Home Secretary Theresa May warned the threat to Britain was ‘grave and relentless’;
• Border guards were on high alert for the Paris suspects attempting to flee to the UK.

Brandishing Kalashnikovs and a rocket propelled grenade launcher two gunmen burst in to the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in Bastille just hours after it had tweeted a satirical cartoon of Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The gunmen appeared to know that an editorial conference of the magazine’s key staff was taking place and chose their targets by name, seemingly selecting them from among colleagues.

Four of France’s most revered cartoonists – Stephane Charbonnier, 47, Georges Wolinski, 80, Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac, 57, and Jean Cabut, 76, died as the gunmen ran amok shouting out ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great) between rounds of automatic gunfire.

People gather in Toulouse last night to show their solidarity for the victims of the attack by gunmen on the offices of the satirical publication

Elsewhere: People gather at the Place Royale in Nantes to show their solidarity for the victims of the attack on the offices of the satirical weekly

Known by his pen name Charb, Mr Charbonnier, edited Charlie Hebdo, and had been the target of death threats. He was included in a 2013 Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam article published by Inspire, the terrorist propaganda magazine published by Al Qaeda.

A police bodyguard assigned to him after the magazine’s offices were attacked in 2011 was among the first to die on Wednesday, at around 11.30am local time. Others killed were named as Michel Renaud, a guest editor, and 73-year-old cartoonist Philippe Honoré.

Minutes earlier, cartoonist Corinne Rey had been forced to let the gunmen into the office block in the 11th arrondissement of Paris after returning from collecting her young daughter from a nursery.

‘I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care, arriving in front of the magazine building, where two masked and armed men brutally threatened us,’ said Miss Rey, who draws under the name Coco. ‘They said they wanted to go up to the offices, so I tapped in the code,’ said Miss Rey, referring to the security system on the interphone.

Miss Rey and her daughter hid under a desk, from where they saw two cartoonists murdered. ‘They shot Wolinski and Cabu,’ she said. ‘It lasted five minutes.’ Miss Rey said the men ‘spoke French perfectly’ and ‘claimed they were ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’.

Calmly leaving behind a scene resembling a war zone with bullet-riddled windows, blood-stained floors and walls and the cries of the dying and wounded, the men ran on to the street outside – their exit and horrific murder that followed captured on a video taken from a nearby rooftop.

Witnesses said they heard the gunmen shouting ‘We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed’, ‘God is Great’ in Arabic and boasting ‘We have killed Charlie Hebdo’. The gunmen made their escape stopping to kill Mr Merabet and then to hijack a car after their vehicle was damaged in a crash.

Appealing for national unity, President Hollande said: ‘We are threatened because we are a country of liberty.’

Charlie Hebdo’s website, which went offline during the attack, is showing the single image of ‘Je suis Charlie’ (I am Charlie) on a black banner, referring to a hashtag that is trending on Twitter in solidarity with the victims.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Second hostage situation in Paris as police surround Charlie Hebdo gunmen

Armed man who has taken up to five hostages at a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris suspected of being the same man who killed a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday

PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 4:41pm
UPDATED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 11:34pm

Agencies in Paris

A helicopter with members of the French intervention gendarme forces hover above the scene of the hostage-taking. Photo: AFP

Fresh shooting broke out in eastern Paris on Friday, with reports that an armed man had taken up to five hostages at a kosher grocery store.

French news agency Agence France-Presse reported that two people were confirmed dead in the incident. Reuters said that one person was seriously injured and six others were taken hostage.

The gunman was suspected of being the same man who killed a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday, who is thought to have links to the assailants who stormed satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

A police official said the man who has taken at least five people hostage in a kosher market on the eastern edges of Paris on Friday appears linked to the newsroom massacre earlier this week that left 12 people dead.

The gunman in the kosher supermarket is apparently in contact with the two brothers cornered by security forces in a village north of Paris.

The mayor’s office in Paris announced the closures on Friday of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris’ Marais neighbourhood, in the heart of the tourist district and about a kilometre away from the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

A call for witnesses released by the Paris Prefecture de Police shows the photos of Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly. Photo: Reuters

Paris police released a photo of Amedy Coulibaly as a suspect in the killing on Thursday of a policewoman, and an official named him as the man holed up in the market.

He said a second suspect, a woman named Hayet Boumddiene, was acting as the gunman’s accomplice.

Helmeted SWAT teams have converged on the scene of the stand-off.

French intervention police take up position near the scene of a hostage taking at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Photo: Reuters

Meanwhile, the two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people in an Islamist attack on the satirical magazine continued to hold one person hostage on Friday as police surrounded the gunmen northeast of the capital.

The hostage drama unfolded at a printing business in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, only 12 kilometres from Paris’s main Charles de Gaulle airport, police sources said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told iTELE television there was little doubt that it had located the two main suspects in the Charlie Hebdo killings at a light industrial unit in northern France where police sources confirmed a hostage-taking was going on.

Audrey Taupenas, spokeswoman for Dammartin-en-Goele, said officials established phone contact with the suspects in order to negotiate the safe evacuation of a school near the printing plant where the men are cornered. She said the suspects agreed.

The lawmaker inside the command post told French television the men had said they “want to die as martyrs.”

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed that an operation was under way to “neutralise” the suspects as the massive manhunt appeared to be reaching a dramatic climax with helicopters buzzing overhead and a huge deployment of security forces.

“An operation is under way which is set to neutralise the perpetrators of the cowardly attack carried out two days ago,” Cazeneuve said in a televised statement.

Police had already exchanged fire with the pair in a high-speed car chase. Prosecutors confirmed that there had been “no casualties reported” in the immediate aftermath of the shoot-out.

Prior to the stand-off, the suspects had hijacked a Peugeot 206 nearby from a woman who said she recognised them as the brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, accused of killing 12 people in Wednesday’s attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which repeatedly lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.

A French army helicopter hovers over the scene of the hostage-taking at an industrial zone. Photo: Reuters

President Francois Hollande rushed to the interior meeting to be briefed on the situation as Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared that France was at “war” with terrorism, but “not in a war against religion.”

“It will without doubt be necessary to take measures” to respond to the terrorist “threat,” he said.

Two Air France planes were forced to abort their landing at Paris’s main Charles-de-Gaulle airport and go round again ‘due to the presence of helicopters... flying over the zone at low-altitude,” the airline said.

The spectacular endgame came as it emerged the brothers had been on a US terror watch list “for years”.

And as fears spread in the wake of the attack, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 warned that Islamist militants were planning other “mass casualty attacks against the West” and that intelligence services may be powerless to stop them.

Wednesday’s bloodbath at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris has sparked a global chorus of outrage, with impromptu and poignant rallies around the world in support of press freedom under the banner “Je suis Charlie” [I am Charlie].

Members of the French intervention gendarme forces arrive at the scene of the hostage-taking at an industrial zone in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris. Photo: Reuters

US President Barack Obama was the latest to sign a book of condolence in Washington with the message “Vive la France!” as thousands gathered in Paris on a day of national mourning on Thursday, and the Eiffel Tower dimmed its lights to honour the dead.

And as a politically divided and crisis-hit France sought to pull together in the wake of the tragedy, the head of the country’s Muslim community – the largest in Europe – urged imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers.

In a highly unusual step, President Francois Hollande was due to meet far-right leader Marine Le Pen at the Elysee Palace later on Friday, as France geared up for a “Republican march” on Sunday expected to draw hundreds of thousands.

French authorities raised the security alert to the highest possible level in the region of Picardy, to the northeast of Paris, as forces tightened their noose on the brothers, Cherif Kouachi, 32 and Said, 34.

Around 24 hours into the manhunt, the brothers were identified after holding up a petrol station 80 kilometres from Paris.

Police officers create a security zone around the industrial zone in Dammartin-en-Goele. Photo: EPA

Helicopters buzzed overhead during the night and paramilitary forces were preparing to step up their house-to-house searches.

As heavily armed crack units swarmed through the normally tranquil countryside villages, residents voiced their nervousness.

“I don’t understand: the police are dressed like Robocops in the streets, but they let us move about freely. What if we came face-to-face with them, what do we do?” asked one woman, who gave her name as Carole.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that a total of 88,000 security forces were mobilised across the country and that an international meeting on terrorism would take place in Paris on Sunday.

Nine people had already been detained as part of the operation, Cazeneuve said.

And in an uneasy French capital, isolated incidents on Thursday ratcheted the tension higher, and the shooter of a policewoman, apparently unrelated to the Charlie Hebdoattacks, was still on the run.

The suspect in this case “has been identified. Two people very close to him have been taken into custody,” a source close to the investigation said.

Police officers and gendarmes patrol in Dammartin-en-Goele. Photo: AFP

Meanwhile, questions mounted as to how a pair well-known for jihadist views could have slipped through the net and attack Charlie Hebdo, apparently in revenge for the weekly’s repeated publication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed.

Cherif Kouachi was a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq.

Said, his brother, has been “formally identified” as the main attacker in Wednesday’s bloodbath. Both brothers were born in Paris to Algerian parents.

A senior US administration official said that one of the two brothers was believed to have trained with al-Qaeda in Yemen, while another source said that the pair had been on a US terror watch list “for years”.

The brothers were both flagged in a US database as terror suspects, and also on the no-fly list, meaning they were barred from flying into the United States, the officials said.

The Islamic State group’s radio praised them as “heroes” and Somalia’s Shebab militants, al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Africa, praised the massacre as a “heroic” act.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Live Updates


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[PressForNirvana]

Official: 2 suspects in French standoff came out shooting

By LORI HINNANT and ELAINE GANLEY
Jan. 9, 2015 11:54 AM EST

This photo provided by The Paris Police Prefecture Thursday, Jan.8, 2015 shows the suspects Cherif, left, and Said Kouachi in the newspaper attack along with a plea for witnesses. Police hunted Thursday for two heavily armed men, one with possible links to al-Qaida, in the methodical killing of 12 people at a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammed.

PARIS (AP) — A security official says the two brothers suspected in the Charlie Hebdo massacre came out firing, prompting the assault on the building where they had holed up with a hostage.

The official was not authorized to speak about the sensitive operations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Officials say the brothers died in the assault.

Another official, police union representative Christophe Crepin, said it appeared that the gunman who took hostages at a kosher market had also died in a nearly simultaneous raid there.

Crepin spoke to LCI televison.

 

[PressForNirvana]

FRENCH SIEGES COME TO BLOODY END: Commandos storm grocery store and printing firm where Charlie Hebdo assassins and policewoman's killer were holed up and KILL all three terrorists

• Said and Cherif Kouachi were holed up in building with hostage at industrial estate 25 miles from the French capital
• Hostage believed to be 26-year-old male salesman at printing works which the gunmen stormed during police chase
• Police 'scrambled phone signals after suspects made contact with fellow jihadist from inside siege building'
• Associate is believed to be behind murder of female PC and another hostage crisis ongoing in Paris today
• He has been named as Amedy Coulibay, 32, who is believed to be operating with girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene
• Runways closed at Charles de Gaulle airport amid fears militants have rocket launchers that can down aircraft
• Salesman at the print works tells how he shook hands with one of the gunmen who told him he was a police officer

By Peter Allen and Simon Tomlinson and Martin Robinson and Claire Duffin and Hannah Roberts and Emine Sinmaz In Longpont For Mailonline and David Williams for the Daily Mail
Published: 08:02 GMT, 9 January 2015 | Updated: 17:20 GMT, 9 January 2015

Two hostage sieges came to a bloody and dramatic climax today after police stormed two buildings in France, killing the Charlie Hebdo gunmen and an accomplice.

At the first stand-off, Al Qaeda brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi were shot dead by special forces as they tried to fight their way out of a print works.

Their hostage, named as Michel Catalano, is believed to have been rescued alive.

Moments later, explosions were heard at a second siege in Paris where a fellow jihadi was threatening to kill captives if police stormed the Kouachis.

At least one hostage is believed to have survived that stand-off, at a kosher supermarket, in what appears to have been a co-ordinated strike by police.

However, there are reports four captives had been killed.

The gunmen, Amedy Coulibay, who was suspected of killing a police officer yesterday, was reportedly shot dead by police.

Gunfire and explosions had been heard at the first hostage siege after police had surrounded the gunmen at an industrial estate 25 miles from Paris.

The siege reached a bloody climax when the brothers reportedly 'came out firing' after an nine-hour stand-off.

They had earlier told police negotiators: 'We are ready to die as martyrs'.

At around 4.30pm, people living nearby reported hearing three or four load explosions followed by several gunshots.

More explosions followed and smoke could be seen rising from the building. Others reported seeing ambulances race to the scene.

A short time later three French special forces officers could be seen on the roof of the building.

Then, at around 5.30 pm, three large helicopters arrived at the scene and landed on the roof. The hostage was named as Michel Catalano.

His family were gathered at their detached home in the nearby village of Othis as the siege came to a dramatic end in Dammartin-en-Goele.

Bloody climax: A huge ball of fire erupts amid gunfire and explosions at a print works where the Charlie Hebdo gunmen were holding a hostage

Explosions were seen moments later at a second hostage siege in Paris where an accomplice was threatening to kill captives if police stormed the Kouachis

Police were last night stationed outside the property, which has a private swimming pool.

One said: 'The family are all here. They have come to support Mrs Catalano. They are all gathered together but they are too upset to speak.'

MailOnline understands that police had earlier scrambled phone signals in the area after the gunmen contacted Coulibay while inside the building.

Coulibay is believed behind the murder of a police officer yesterday and a new hostage crisis ongoing in Paris today.

The third hostage-taker, named as Amedy Coulibay, 32, this afternoon took at least six captives at a kosher grocery, leaving two people dead.

Police say Coulibay is demanding that the Kouachi brothers be allowed to go free in return for his captives.

In their sights: Police train their weapons on a building where the Charlie Hebdo gunmen are holed up with a hostage in Dammartin-en-Goele

Frantic: Police rush to the scene of the hostage-taking at an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goele around 25 miles from Paris

Siege: The gunmen are surrounded by police commandos who have begun negotiations to try to secure the release of the hostage

Trapped: The brothers were cornered in the premises of a printing firm after leading police on a dramatic car chase

Scoping it out: Police and armed forces take up positions in Dammartin-en-Goele after landing by helicopter in fields near the hostage scene

Revelations that a call was made by the Kouachis suggests they may have instructed Coulibay to carry out today's atrocity to leverage their escape.

There were reports of another alert near the Eiffel Tower, with police seen training their guns down the stairs of a Metro station, but it was a false alarm.

Local media reports that the brothers met Coulibay while in prison.

He is believed to be a fellow member of the Buttes Chaumont – a gang from the 19th arrondissement of Paris that sent jihadists to fight in Iraq.

The Kouachis were cornered in Dammartin-en-Goele, around 25 miles from the capital, this morning after leading police on a dramatic car chase.

After exchanging gunfire with officers, they fled on foot into printing works where they are holding a hostage, believed to be a 26-year-old male.

After a meeting with President Hollande when news of the siege broke, MP Nicolas Dupont-Aignan said: 'It's time to terrorise the terrorists'

Hemmed in: Police officers create a ring of steel around the industrial estate where the Charlie Hebdo killers are holding a hostage

MailOnline understands police scrambled phone signals in the area after the gunmen made contact with a fellow jihadist from the building

How three days of terror unfolded after gunmen first stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on Wednesday

A salesman called Didier later told how he was supposed to meet a client called Michel at the print works, but was instead met by one of the gunmen.

He said he shook hands with the militant because he had identified himself as a police officer and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle.

He said: 'When I arrived, my client came out with an armed man who said he was from the police.

'My client told me to leave so I left,' Didier said, identifying the man he was to meet with as Michel.'

He said the black-clad man who was wearing a bullet-proof vest told him: 'Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow'.

'That really struck me,' Didier added. 'So I decided to call the police. I guess it was one of the terrorists.

'It could have been a policeman if he hadn't told me "we don't kill civilians". They were heavily armed like elite police.'

'I didn't know it was a hostage situation, or a robbery. I just knew something wasn't quite right. I think I am going to go and see my colleagues and play the lottery because I was very lucky this morning.'

Meanwhile, a worker in a nearby building told how he barricaded the doors as the hostage crisis unfolded.

He said: 'None of us feel safe. We can hear the helicopters. It is terrifying.'

One of the pupils inside the Dammartin-en-Goele school said by phone from inside: 'We're scared. We've called our parents to make sure they're OK.

'We've been told we have to stay inside. All the lights have been switched off.'

On guard: A police officer stands along a road near the industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goele, some 25 miles north-east of Paris

Police check vehicles near the industrial estate. Residents were warned to stay indoors and pupils were being kept inside school

WORKER TELLS OF HIS LUCKY ESCAPE AFTER SHAKING HANDS WITH HOSTAGE GUNMAN

A salesman has told how he shook hands with one of the gunman when they arrived at the print works thinking he was a police officer.

He said: 'When I arrived my client came out with an armed man who said he was from the police.

'My client told me to leave so I left,' Didier said, identifying the man he was to meet with as Michel.
'I was in front of the door. I shook Michel's hand and I shook the hand of one of the terrorists.'
He said the black-clad man who was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov rifle told him: 'Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow'.
'That really struck me,' Didier added. 'So I decided to call the police. I guess it was one of the terrorists.
'It could have been a policeman if he hadn't told me "we don't kill civilians". They were heavily armed like elite police.'
'I didn't know it was a hostage situation, or a robbery. I just knew something wasn't quite right.
'I think I am going to go and see my colleagues and play the lottery because I was very lucky this morning.'

Snipers had their weapons trained on the building and helicopters were hovering overhead as negotiations were underway with the Islamic fanatics.

Runways have been closed at Charles de Gaulle airport, around five miles away over fears the gunmen have rocket launchers that can down planes.

Police confirmed a hostage had been taken and that officers are 'trying to establish contact' with the suspects.

The family of Michel Catalano, the director of the firm at the centre of the siege told Le Figaro newspaper that they had not spoken to him since this morning and feared he may be the hostage.

Mr Catalano and his wife Veronique live in Othis, less than four miles from the scene.

After a meeting with President Hollande when news of the siege broke, politician Nicolas Dupont-Aignan said: 'It's time to terrorise the terrorists.'

Referring to Islam, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: 'We are in a war against terrorists, we're not in a war with religion.'

An Interior Ministry source confirmed that the men had said they were 'ready to die as martyrs'.

Prior to the standoff, the suspects hijacked a Peugeot 206 from a woman in Ermenonville Forest, close to the village of Montagny-Sainte-Felicite, agyer abandoning their Renualt Clio.

A teacher named Charlene Blondelle was driving to work in the morning when she saw two men with guns stop the vehicle in front of her.

It was only when she got to work at the village school that she realised the two heavily-armed men were the Kouachi brothers.

Jean Paul Douet, the mayor of the village, said Charlene saw the two men force the woman out of the car and sit in the back seat.

It is thought that she was later let out of the car as the men continued their journey to Dammartin-en-Goele.

Both women are with police officers in Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. It is not thought that the woman sustained any injuries.

Mr Douet told MailOnline: 'The car was taken at around 8.10am. The village teacher arrived at her school to see a car being hijacked in front of her.

'She saw their weapons, and in particular their rocket-propelled grenade launcher.'

French media reported the brothers were in a car when they came upon her and abandoned that to use hers instead.

She recognised them as the wanted men, a police source said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior said there was an exchange of gunfire with police who were manning a roadblock on the N2 motorway as the brother sped towards Paris.

He told France Info radio that no-one was injured in the clash.

Holed up: The gunmen escaped on foot into a small printing business (above) called Creating Trend Discovery, just before 9am GMT

Terror in the midst: Dammartin-en-Goele is in lockdown, with children in its three schools being kept inside for their own protection

Dozens of police then pursued the brothers along the National 2 highway, ending in Dammartin-en-Goele, close to the area where the huge manhunt had been focused on a forest overnight.

They escaped on foot with a hostage into a small printing business named Creating Trend Discovery, just before 10am (9am GMT).

Residents were warned on the town's official website to stay indoors and pupils were being kept inside school.

Natoly Ratsimbazasy, a hairdresser in Dammartan-en-Goele, said the town - of 6,000 inhabitants - was deserted.

He told MailOnline: 'It is very quiet in the centre. We have all been told to stay indoors and away from the windows. They have sealed off the area. We are all very scared, especially for the children. We don't know how this is all going to end.'

A restaurateur in the town said: 'It is insane what is happening, I can't believe it.'

Universities and schools in the surroundings of the hostage crisis are shut for the day.

Student Nishanth Selvakumer, 20, said: 'Every one is so shocked. There is not much work in Dammartain so most people work on the industrial estate.

'In the village, they have been told to stay in their homes and stay away from the windows. The schools are all shut and the universities too.'

Rayane Bouallayuer, 18, said his 11-year-old sister and his father were barricaded into the school.

'My sister went to school at 8am but at 9am we saw on TV that the suspects came here so my father went to get her. Now they cannot leave.'

'The teachers have spoken to the kids and explained to them what happened in Paris. Yesterday they had a minutes silence at school but I think today they are very scared. Some of them were crying.

'My family is Muslim but these men are not real Muslims. They are not like me. They do not represent us. Now it is going to get much worse for us real Muslims in France. '

Stake out: Snipers train their weapons on the building as negotiations were underway with the Islamic fanatics

A helicopter searching for Charlie Hebdo suspects hovers above Dammartin-en-Goele as the net closed in on the killers

Universities and schools near the hostage scene have been shut as police set up a ring of steel around Dammartin-en-Goele

Police vans are seen chasing the Charlie Hebdo killers amid fears they have taken hostages on a 'martyrdom mission' towards Paris

Carole Morais, who works in the town hall, said: 'We're locked in and following events on the internet'.

The hunt also affected flights at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which closed two runways to arrivals to avoid interfering in the standoff or endangering planes.

The dramatic development came after thousands of police and soldiers had focused their hunt for the gunmen in a nearby forest amid fears they were planning a final 'spectacular' before capture.

The search for the gunmen last night focused on a cave in a vast forest in northern France, but had turned up nothing.

The pair left behind their identity cards in the Citroen they used for the massacre – a move which appeared deliberate, intelligence specialists said.

There was also no sign of the AK-47s and rocket launchers which they had earlier been seen with, suggesting they had taken them into the forest.

Police now fear they could take hostages or are planning a final 'spectacular' before capture as the search enters its third day.

Meanwhile, shots rang out close to the Porte de Vincennes in Paris as another hostage crisis unfolded.

'There is a hostage situation - shots have been fired,' said a Paris police spokesman, who said up to five people were originally being held in Vincennes and there were 'believed to be two fatalities'.

French police have now named the suspected hostage taker as Amedy Coulibaly, 33, while his girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is also believed to be involved.

Footage from a local broadcaster shows a team of heavily armed police officers swarming into the area, where a gunman linked to the Charlie Hebdo killers was holding up to five hostages in a Kosher store in eastern Paris

Armed police face off against the gunman, suspected to the person responsible for shooting policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe yesterda

Amedy Coulibay (left) is believed to be behind the murder of a police officer yesterday and a new hostage crisis ongoing in Paris today. He is believed to be working with his girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene (right) who is also said to be 'armed and dangerous'

SUSPECTED THIRD HOSTAGE-TAKER A 'CLOSE ASSOCIATE' OF THE KOUACHI BROTHERS

The hostage taker in a new terror attack on Paris is a close associate of the Kouachi brothers, who killed 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo massacre two days ago.

Two people have been killed in a Kosher store in eastern Paris where a 'heavily armed' Islamic terrorist is currently holding hostages, police believe.

Sources in the Paris force said the suspected murderer was Amedy Coulibay, 32, who is wearing body armour and brandishing two Kalashnikov automatic weapons.

It's thought that he is of Senegalese origin and attended the Addawa Mosque in Paris with the Kouachi brothers.

As part of a jihadist cell with Said and Cherif Kouachi, he was involved in the failed prison break attempt of Smain Ait Ali Belkacem - the mastermind behind a wave of bombings in France in 1995 which killed eight people and wounded 120.

Coulibay, who was himself jailed in 2010 for his involvement in the plot, has a long history of both petty and serious crimes.

The only boy born in a family of 10 in Juvisy, Essonne, he first came to police attention as a 17-year-old delinquent.

Convictions for theft and drug offences followed. In September 2002 in Orleans, Loiret, he was arrested for the armed robbery of a bank.

It's believed he became involved with the younger of the Kouachi brothers, Cherif, when he was part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in Iraq.

Kouachi was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

He is said to be working with a woman called Hayat Boumeddiene, 27, who is also said to be 'armed and dangerous'.

Coulibaly is thought to have become radicalised when he came under the influence of Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian convicted of terrorism.

Beghal was once accused of being Osama Bin Laden's main European recruiter and has been linked with Cherif Kouachi.

Coulibaly admitted to police he saw Beghal every three weeks but purely for 'religious instruction.' It is understood that he married Hyat Boumeddiene in a religious ceremony after she waited four years for him to come out of jail following his conviction for armed robbery.

The couple were never married in a civil ceremony – the only marriage legally accepted in France.

Pictured: Police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe was gunned down as she attended a routine traffic accident in Montrouge at 8am yesterday

Coulibay is believed to be the one responsible for shooting a policewoman dead in south Paris on Thursday.

The revelation has led police to link it to the murder of 12 people around the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine on Wednesday.

Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 27, was unarmed and directing traffic in Montrouge, in south Paris, when she was gunned down by Coulibay, who was still wearing body armour and using an automatic assault rifle.

The murderer has been identified by police who said he belonged to the Buttes Chaumont network, which sent Jihadi fighters to Iraq.

'He was in the same Buttes Chaumount cell as the Kouachi brothers,' said a source close to the investigation. 'He was friends of both of them.'

Two of Coulibay relatives were arrested in nearby Grigny during a police raid this morning.

Like the Kouachis, he is known to have been radicalised by an Islamic preacher in Paris, before expressing a wish to fight in Iraq or Syria.

Police officers stop two people on a scooter at gunpoint as they arrive near the scene of the hostage taking

The pair are aggressively wrestled to the ground by police officers tasked with preventing anyone coming and going from the scene

Police cordons (pictured) have been established to surround the kosher bakery, where it's thought a woman and children are held captive

Unfolding terror: A graphic showing the developments since the shootings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on Wednesday morning

HOW ATTACK ON CHARLIE HEBDO HQ AND THE MASSIVE ANTI-TERROR POLICE MANHUNT HAS UNFOLDED

WEDNESDAY

10.25am: Mother with her young daughter is forced to allow gunmen into offices of Charlie Hebdo
10.30am: Terrorists call out editors by name before executing them, then exit the building
10.30am-10.50am: Gunmen leave the building in a black Citroen, driving up Allee Verte where they encounter a police car. They open fire, wounding a policeman
- While trying to get to nearby Boulevard Richard Lenoir they encounter more police and exchange fire, nobody is injured
- Once on the boulevard they see a policeman on the pavement and open fire before executing him as he lays on the ground
11am: The men crash their Citroen on Rue de Meaux and hijack another vehicle to continue their escape
3.30pm: Raids on apartments in northern Paris, including a home thought to belong to one of the suspects in Gennevilliers
5:30pm: The dead are named as Stephane Charbonnier, editor of Charlie Hebdo, along with Bernard Maris, Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut, aka Cabu, Bernard Verlhac and contributor Philippe Honore
6pm: As darkness falls people take to the streets to hold vigils, holding up signs reading Je Suis Charlie - I am Charlie
10.41pm: Raids take place in Reim as riot police storm buildings of those linked to two suspects. Seven people, thought to be friends of the suspects, are arrested
11pm: Hamid Mourad hands himself in to police in Charleville-Mezieres after seeing his name on social media

THURSDAY

12:31am: Police name shooting suspects as brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi
7.45am: Second gun attack in Paris in which a female police officer and a street cleaner are wounded
7.58am: Suspect arrested in connection with second attack, reported to be a North African man with an assault rifle. Another believed to be on the run
9.58am: Female police officer wounded in the second shooting dies at a hospital in Paris
10.34am: Police carry out a raid on a hotel near to where the second attack happened
10.39am: Officers surround a petrol station in Villers-Cotteret, northern Aisne region, after manager said he recognised gunmen
11am: A minute's silence takes place in memory of the 12 killed
11.10am: Surviving Charlie Hebdo staff announce magazine will be published next week
11.30am: Police surround a property in Crepy-En-Valois after suspects reported to be inside

It came as Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitted the Kouachi brothers were on the radar of the intelligence services and 'were likely' to have been under surveillance before the atrocity.

Yesterday, the brothers abandoned their car near the village of Abbaye de Longpont shortly after robbing a petrol station yesterday.

Anti-terror officers found a jihadi flag and a Molotov cocktail in the Renault Clio the gunmen hijacked to escape the French capital – and two men fitting their descriptions were seen running into the Foret de Retz, which covers an area larger than Paris.

A petrol station attendant in Villers-Cotterets told police he had seen Kalashnikovs (AK-47s) and rocket launchers in the vehicle which had sped away after the men had stolen food and water.

There are fewer than 300 residents in Longpont and armed officers were carrying out house-to-house searches as helicopters with thermal imagery equipment capable of identifying human bodies among the trees were called in.

Last night, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said a total of nine people were now in custody and more than 90 witnesses had been interviewed.

When and why that surveillance was dropped were two of the many questions being asked yesterday as a senior American counter-terrorism official confirmed that the brothers were on the US no-fly list.

But officials were tight-lipped about what else they know about them, including whether they fought in the Middle East with extremist groups.

Grief-stricken: Jeannette Bougrab, the partner of 'Charb' – Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo – joins a rally outisde the Paris City Hall. In an emotional interview, she said she always knew he would be assassinated

CNN reported that the US 'was given information from the French intelligence agency that Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen as late as 2011 on behalf of the Al Qaeda affiliate there'.

The network said Said received a variety of weapons training from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), including on how to fire weapons. It added: 'It is also possible Said was trained in bomb making.'

In 2008, Cherif Kouachi was sentenced to three years in jail for his association with an underground organisation.

'While in jail, he came under the influence of the one-time British-based terrorist Djemal Beghal, who was sentenced to ten years in prison by the French courts for terrorist offenders.

But despite the security services knowing the men were radicalised and suspected of having been trained in military tactics in east Yemen by Al Qaeda, they were not under surveillance on Wednesday.

Last night there had already been several revenge attacks, with shots fired at a Muslim prayer room in the southern town of Port-la-Nouvelle.

A Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in southern Vaucluse, while 'Death to Arabs' was daubed on a mosque in Poitiers, central France.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Gunmen killed in bloody end to French sieges

Charlie Hebdo suspects went down firing; Paris police storm Jewish store

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 2:15am
UPDATED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 2:47am

Agencies in Dammartin-en-Goele, France

Police evacuate hostages after launching an assault against a gunman at a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris. The gunman was reported killed. Photo: AFP

Elite French police stormed a printworks and a Jewish supermarket yesterday, killing two brothers wanted for the Charlie Hebdo attack and an apparent accomplice who had taken hostages in two separate sieges that traumatised the nation.

Explosions rocked a small printing firm in the village of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, and smoke poured from the building after the heavily armed forces mounted their assault as night fell.

The two Islamists launched a desperate escape bid, charging out of the building firing at the security forces before being cut down in their tracks, a security source said.

Meanwhile, in the east of Paris, gunfire erupted as police stormed a Jewish store, where at least one armed assailant had seized five hostages after two people were killed in a gun battle. The gunman was also killed, security sources said, as terrified hostages were seen running out of the store.

The dramatic climax to the two stand-offs brought to an end more than 48 hours of fear and uncertainty in the country that began when the two brothers slaughtered 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine, in the bloodiest attack on French soil in half a century.

The hostage-taker in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris was suspected of gunning down a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday and knew at least one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.

French police released mugshots of the man, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, as well as a woman named as 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, also wanted over the shooting of the police officer.

The Porte de Vincennes area was swamped with police who shut down the city's ringroad as well as schools and shops in the area.

Residents were ordered to stay indoors.

In Dammartin-en-Goele, only 12km from Paris' main Charles de Gaulle airport, French elite forces had deployed snipers on roofs and helicopters buzzed low over the small printing business where the Charlie Hebdo suspects had been cornered early yesterday

A screengrab taken from an AFP TV video shows a general view of members of the French police special forces launching the assault at a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris. Photo: AFP

Police sources said there was a "connection" between the supermarket gunman and Cherif and Said Kouachi, accused of carrying out the massacre at Charlie Hebdo.

Ahead of the stand-off, police had already exchanged fire with the pair - orphans of Algerian origin - in a high-speed car chase.

One witness described coming face-to-face at the printing firm with one of the suspects, dressed in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying what looked like a Kalashnikov.

The salesman told France Info radio that one of the brothers said: "Leave, we don't kill civilians anyhow."

Schools in the area were evacuated and residents barricaded themselves indoors as the high-profile standoff with police unfolded.

Prior to the standoff, the suspects had hijacked a car from a woman who said she recognised the brothers.

The spectacular attacks came as it emerged the brothers had been on a US terror watch list "for years".

Snipers opposite an industrial site where the Charlie Hebdo suspects were holed up yesterday. Photo: AFP

And as fears spread in the wake of the attack, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 warned that Islamist militants were planning other "mass casualty attacks against the West" and that intelligence services may be powerless to stop them.

As a politically divided and crisis-hit France sought to pull together in the wake of the tragedy, the head of the country's Muslim community - the largest in Europe - urged imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers.

In a highly unusual step, French President Francois Hollande met far-right leader Marine Le Pen at the Elysee Palace later yesterday, as France geared up for a "Republican march" tomorrow expected to draw hundreds of thousands.

Interior Minsiter Bernard Cazeneuve announced that a total of 88,000 security forces were mobilised across the country and that an international meeting on terrorism would take place in Paris on Sunday.

Meanwhile, questions mounted as to how a pair well-known for jihadist views could have slipped through the net and attack Charlie Hebdo.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was a known jihadist convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq.

Said, 34, has been "formally identified" as the main attacker in Wednesday's bloodbath. Both brothers were born in Paris to Algerian parents.

A senior US administration official told Agence France-Presse that one of the two brothers was believed to have trained with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, while another source said that the pair had been on a US terror watch list "for years".

The brothers were barred from flying into the United States, the officials said.

The Islamic State group's radio praised them as "heroes" and Somalia's Shebab militants, al-Qaeda's main affiliate in Africa, praised the massacre as a "heroic" act.

Refusing to be cowed, the controversial Charlie Hebdo magazine plans a print run of one million copies instead of its usual 60,000, as journalists from all over the French media landscape piled in to help out the decimated staff.

"It's very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win," said columnist Patrick Pelloux.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Brothers of hate who turned killers in Paris terror attack

As investigators probe the suspected gunmen responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, revelations emerge about their path to jihad

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 3:39am
UPDATED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 3:42am

Agencies In Paris

Cherif Kouachi in a 2005 French television documentary

The younger brother was a ladies' man who belted out rap lyrics before the words of a radical preacher persuaded him to book a flight to Syria to wage holy war.

Members of a specialist French police unit run towards the printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport, where the suspects had taken a hostage. Photo: Reuters

Less is known about his elder sibling, whose ID card was found in the getaway car used by the gunmen in Wednesday's Paris attack. But US officials said both were on the US no-fly list and the older brother had travelled to Yemen, where he met the late al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, according to a senior Yemeni intelligence source.

The Kouachi brothers - 32-year-old Cherif and 34-year-old Said, 34 - are the targets of a huge manhunt after the precision attack that killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly that lampooned radical Muslims and the Prophet Mohammed. Witnesses said the gunmen claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen.

Both Kouachi brothers - the Paris-born children of Algerian parents - were already known to American and French counterterrorism authorities.

Cherif, a former pizza deliveryman, had appeared in a 2005 French television documentary on Islamic extremism and was sentenced to 18 months' jail in 2008 for trying to join fighters battling in Iraq.

It was the teachings of a firebrand Muslim preacher that put him on the path to jihad in his rough-and-tumble neighbourhood of northeastern Paris, Kouachi said in the documentary.

Said Kouachi's ID card, which was found in a getaway car. Photo: AFP

The cleric "told me that [holy] texts prove the benefits of suicide attacks", Kouachi said. "It's written in the texts that it's good to die as a martyr."

Reporters who covered the 2008 trial, which exposed a recruiting pipeline for Muslim holy war in the multi-ethnic and working-class 19th arrondissement of Paris, recalled a skinny young defendant who appeared very nervous in court. Cherif Kouachi's lawyer said at the time that his client had fallen in with the wrong crowd.

During the trial, Kouachi was said to have undergone only minimal combat training - going jogging in a Paris park to shape up and learning how a Kalashnikov rifle works by studying a sketch.

He was described as a reluctant holy warrior, relieved to have been stopped by French counter-espionage officials from taking a Syria-bound flight that was ultimately supposed to lead him to the battlefields of Iraq.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, however, said on Thursday that Kouachi had been described by fellow would-be jihadis at the time as "violently anti-Semitic".

French police helicopters hover over the industrial zone in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, where the suspects in Wednesday's Paris massacre were holed up yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Imprisonment changed him, his former attorney Vincent Ollivier told Le Parisien newspaper in a story published on Thursday.

Kouachi became unresponsive and began growing a beard, the lawyer said, adding that he wondered whether the stint behind bars transformed his client into a ticking time bomb.

There was a time, though, when he had very different interests. Footage in the documentary, part of a prestigious French public television series titled Evidence for the Prosecution, shows him in 2004, when, according to the narrator, the lanky young man in a black T-shirt with extremely close-cropped hair and a chunky wristwatch was keener on spending time with girls than on going to the mosque. He appears relaxed and smiling as he pals around with friends.

At one point, with his baseball cap worn backwards, Kouachi belts out some rap music and breaks into a joyful dance.

After he was released from prison, he worked in a supermarket's fish section in the Paris suburbs for six months starting in 2009. Supervisors said he gave no cause for concern. Around then, he married a devout Muslim woman who ran activities for toddlers in a creche. The couple lived in Gennevilliers, in the Hauts-de-Seine department.

Le Monde newspaper reported that in 2010 Kouachi was placed under surveillance and detained when investigators discovered a plan to break out of jail the mastermind of the 1995 bombing at a Paris train station, which injured 30 people. Kouachi was ultimately released with no charges ever brought.

Much less has become public about the older brother, Said, but Cazeneuve said the jobless resident of the city of Reims was also known to authorities, despite having never been prosecuted, because he was "on the periphery" of the illegal activities his younger sibling was involved in.

As the stand-off continued, members of the media packed the top of a nearby hill to gain a better view of the unfolding drama. Photo: Reuters

While US officials said the brothers were on the no-fly list that includes known or suspected terrorists and extremists, they were tight-lipped about what else they know about them, including whether they fought in the Middle East with extremist groups.

A French security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American authorities had shared intelligence with France indicating that Said had travelled to Yemen several years ago for training. French authorities were seeking to verify the information, the official said.

A Yemeni source said Said was in Yemen for a number of months in 2011 as one of the foreigners who entered the country for religious studies. During his time there, the source said, he met Awlaki.

In Reims, about 145km northeast of Paris, Said frequented a prayer room on the ground floor of an apartment building, according to the local imam, Abdul-Hamid al-Khalifa.

Khalifa described Said as someone who wore traditional North Africa clothes to prayers and did not mix much - if at all - with other worshippers. "Typically, he'd come late to prayers and leave right when they were done," he said.

If French authorities are now hunting for the right suspects, it may be because of Said, Cazeneuve hinted. In the stolen Citroen abandoned by the gunmen on Wednesday, police found a French identity card in the older Kouachi's name. After the attackers dumped the first car, they grabbed another, and Cazeneuve said the elder Kouachi had been identified as "the aggressor" by witnesses shown his photo.

A third suspect identified by French authorities in the attack turned himself in on Wednesday night. Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station after learning his name had been linked to the case in the news, said Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor. She did not specify his relationship to the Kouachis but French authorities have gone on to say that he faces no charges over Wednesday's attack.

But analysts expressed fears that the unanswered question of whether the Charlie Hebdo attackers were acting on their own, or carrying out orders from a superior elsewhere meant that the possibility of other conspirators could not be ruled out yet.

The web of associations, typical of contemporary militant activism, complicates the task of investigators looking to establish the origins of the attack.

"It is impossible that an operation on the scale of the one that led to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo was not sponsored by Daesh [an alternative name for Islamic State],"said Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on radical Islam at Paris's Sciences Po university.

However, experts are split over the attackers' degree of professionalism.

Some of their tactics indicated a familiarity with weapons, but they were unclear of the exact address of the magazine they were targeting and unfamiliar with its security systems. Training by al-Qaeda and its affiliates has always stressed thorough prior reconnaissance.

Analysts say the more likely scenario is one involving a small number of principal actors who were supported by the broader network built up over decades to execute a plan they had envisaged for almost as long.

Associated Press, Tribune News Service, The Guardian

 

[PressForNirvana]

Revealed: How customer in kosher deli was executed when he grabbed one of terrorist's guns and it JAMMED - as dramatic video shows moment SWAT team gunned down hostage taker

• Heroic customer at kosher supermarket in Paris snatched one of terrorist Amedy Coulibaly's guns during the siege
  
• Hostage turned the gun on the extremist - only to find it had been left on a counter because it was jammed
• Dramatic account revealed by a survivor reveals that Coulibaly then shot and killed the customer in cold blood
• Survivor - known only as Mickael B, was trapped inside the Jewish supermarket with his three-year-old son
• Hostage taker Amedy Coulibaly, 32, was responsible for shooting dead a policewoman on Thursday
• In the hours after the raid, police stand guard at the store where bodies of the victims are seen lying on the floor
• An Israeli government official said 15 hostages were rescued while French president confirmed four people killed
• Series of explosions rocked the building as armed police launched their raid in the suburb Porte de Vincennes
• It comes two days after Cherif and Said Kouachi massacred 12 people at Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris
• Prosecutor reveals 500 phone calls made between the wife of Coulibaly and one of the Kouachi brothers
• Police are interrogating the wives of the Kouachis in a bid to track down Coulibaly's wife Hayat Boumeddiene
• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

By Gemma Mullin and Corey Charlton and Peter Allen and Tom Wyke and Jay Akbar and Julian Robinson and Fidelma Cook For Mailonline
Published: 21:11 GMT, 9 January 2015 | Updated: 12:09 GMT, 10 January 2015

A heroic customer at the kosher supermarket in Paris snatched one of the terrorist's guns and turned it on the hostage taker - only to find it was jammed, leaving the extremist to execute him in cold blood.

The dramatic account was revealed by a survivor who fled the shoot-out as armed police officers and soldiers raided the store yesterday.

Mickael B, as he wishes to be known, was held in the store with his three-year-old son when the fellow hostage suddenly grabbed the weapon which had been left on the counter and tried to fire it at terrorist Amedy Coulibaly.

But, after discovering the gun had been left there because it was malfunctioning, the extremist shot and killed the brave hostage.

This is the moment a man sprinted towards armed police as an officer aimed a hand gun at him amid a blaze of gunfire at the kosher supermarket

Commandos launched flash grenades into the grocery and fired into the store before hostage taker Amedy Coulibaly was gunned down

Giving a terrifying account, Mickael said: ‘I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang – very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew what was happening.’

‘I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms – our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.

‘Five minutes later a store employee was sent down by the killer. She said he said we were to go back up otherwise there’d be carnage. I refused to go up.

‘By now my son, understanding nothing, was panicking. Then minutes later the employee comes back down with the same message. This time I decided to follow her up the spiral staircase.

‘At the top a man was dying in a pool of his own blood. The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. "I am Amedi Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State," he told us.'

‘Then he told us to put our phones on the ground. He walked around the store, armed, totally justifying himself, speaking of Palestine, French prisons, his brothers in Syria and many other things.

‘Suddenly one of the customers tried to grab one of his guns which he’d left on the counter. It wasn’t working. The terrorist had put it there because it had blocked after the first shots,' Mickael told Le Point.

‘He turned and shot at the customer who died on the spot.'

Moments after police had stormed the grocery, terrified captives ran from the supermarket flanked by French commandos

Images have emerged of Amedy Coulibaly's bloodied body lying on a pavement surroudnded by forenzic officers after the siege had come to a dramatic end

Tributes: Flowers were this morning left tied to police fences erected outside the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris

Mickael added: 'He then demanded that I call the media, which I did. From then on the phone in the store never stopped ringing. It was mainly journalists. I told them now was not the time. My son started to cry he wanted to go home. He said the terrorist was a bad man.

‘I managed to get my phone out discreetly and got in touch with the police outside while the terrorist was roaming the aisles.

‘A policeman told me that we should be ready to throw ourselves flat on the ground when the assault came, which would be soon.

‘It was obvious that the terrorist was preparing to die. He said it was his reward. He had a weapon in each hand and boxes of cartridges nearby. He suddenly began to pray.

‘My mobile was still on. The police had heard it all. Minutes later the shop grille was lifted. We knew it was the start of the assault.

‘We flung ourselves to the ground. The noise was deafening. He was dead. It was over.’

Meanwhile dramatic footage has emerged of the moment police stormed in to the Paris kosher supermarket last night before terrorist Amedy Coulibaly was shot dead.

Commandos launched flash grenades into the grocery and fired into the shop before a man believed to be the hostage taker was gunned down. Moments later, terrified captives could be seen running to safety.

It comes as it was revealed that the Isis fanatic had slaughtered four hostages before officers launched the raid.

Last night, chilling images emerged of bodies lying on the floor of the bullet-ridden shop after several shoppers were taken hostage inside the grocery store - including women and children. Further images emerged of Coulibaly's bloodied body lying on a pavement after the siege had come to a dramatic end.

It has also been revealed there were 500 calls made between the phone belonging to Coulibaly's wife Hayat Boumeddiene - who is now on the run from police following the hostage siege - and a phone belonging to one of the wives of the Kouachi brothers.

It is unclear at this stage exactly who made the calls, but police are now interrogating the wives of the Kouachi brothers in a bid to track down armed and dangerous Boumeddiene.

A distraught woman takes a moment to lay a bouquet of flowers outside the supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, less than 24 hours after commandos raided it to rescue hostages

A victim of the siege in eastern Paris on Thursday is seen lying on the floor near the entrance to the supermarket after four hostages were killed

Questions were asked today of how the Charlie Hebdo shooters had been able to carry out the attacks. Both the Kouachi brothers are understood to have been on British and American terror watch lists.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: 'There was a failing, of course. That's why we have to analyse what happened.

'They wanted to attack tolerance, the Jews of France once again. Four died yesterday and without the professionalism of forces that figure would have been much higher.

'We must never lower our guard. I am telling you this with a great deal of strength. We must carry on. We are doing our best, our utmost in order to fight against terrorism but there is always ways for terrorism to slip in.

'We have to be really strong, really tough as far as the enemies of freedom are concerned.'

Referring to a unity rally being held tomorrow, he said: 'It will be a rally which will be unbelievable and remain in the annals of history. It will shout and express its love and freedom and tolerance. Tomorrow's rally will be a cry for freedom.'

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said authorities are 'determined' to 'take the necessary measures to be able to protect the country'.

He said agencies are working to 'obtain intelligence from the investigations with regard to those who were the origin of these criminal acts'.

Mr Cazeneuve said: 'That's the case for terrorist acts but also for all the risks that the country is being confronted with, as for other countries in the European Union.'

Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed in the raid, threatened to kill his hostages if police attempted to storm the Charlie Hebdo terrorists who, at the time, were engaged in a similar standoff with police.

In the hours after the dramatic raid on the store, an Israeli government official said 15 hostages were rescued while French president Francois Hollande confirmed that four people were killed.

Coulibaly was also responsible for the fatal shooting of a policewoman on Thursday. It has now been suggested this attack may have been an aborted attempt to attack a Jewish school.

Police officers look for clues while a body, partially seen to the right, lies inside the kosher market after the siege came to an end yesteday

Forensics are examining the interior of the supermarket amid reports four captives were killed in the stand-off between police and the gunman

French police named the hostage taker as Amedy Coulibaly (right). Police also named Hayat Boumeddiene (left) as helping him. However, it is no longer clear whether she was involved

An armed police officer with a dog stands guard close to the entrance where a man's body lies on the floor after a raid on the kosher shop

A woman runs from the Paris kosher grocery store in tears as she is led away by French police after officers stormed the building yesterday

A man clutches a small boy close as they flee the Hyper Cacher store where they were held hostage yesterday (left) as a woman runs from the building in tears (right)

Prosecutor Francois Molins also said that several people have been handed preliminary charges in the investigation following the three-day rampage that has terrified France. They include family members of the three suspects, who were killed by police Friday.

He added that one of the two gunmen in the other standoff Friday was wounded in the throat in a shootout with police before being killed later in the day.

One woman who visited the Kosher shop described its manager Michel Emsalem as a 'kind' and 'patient' man.

Latifa Benjamaa, 37, said: 'He is kind, nice and polite. He is not someone who cares about religion. I often went to shop there and I'm a Muslim,' she said.

While it remained unclear whether the manager was involved in the incident, she added: 'This has nothing to do with religion. You are not allowed to kill in my religion. These men had an objective. These people are not doing this for Allah.'

Mrs Benjamaa said she feared people would begin rioting in the street.

She said: 'Now they are going to be repercussions. There will be war on the streets. Everyone is going to fear everyone. Before, things were fine.'

Police crowd one of the entrances to the supermarket before a burst of flames explodes, while officers hold up their riot shields as protection

Running for the lives, the hostages holed up in the grocery store for most of yesterday included young families, women and children

A mother can only express her relief as she clutches her young son as a partner puts up his thumb to signal that the young family are okay

One of the injured hostages is carried from the supermarket on a stretcher as medics quickly attempt to treat them for their injuries

Paramedics are on the scene to treat injured hostages following the raid where it is believed at least four hostages have been killed

Police officers protect themselves with riot shields as a fiery blast explodes at the entrance to the supermarket in Porte de Vincennes

It is reported that at least one of the police officers was injured in the blast and six explosions were heard at the Jewish supermarket yesterday

Armed police swarm the entrances and exits to the Hyper Cache in eastern Paris after several shoppers were held hostage for several hours

Officers stormed the supermarket minutes after two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre were killed at a second siege on the outskirts of Paris

A man carrying a small child is seen fleeing from the ordeal moments after police stormed the kosher grocery store in eastern Paris

The hostages, pictured as they escape the building, were just two of many who were seen to have survived the ordeal

The man is pictured in another shot carrying the small child in his arms, while the kosher grocery behind him remains illuminated

Members of the French special forces escort a number of hostages from inside the store moments after a series of explosions were heard

Hostages are pictured piling out of the building after terrorist Coulibaly was left dead in the dramatic confrontation

Pictured is a person being taken away from the scene on a stretcher after four hostages were killed in the incident

The streets surrounding the siege are filled with ambulances and police cars in the minutes following the dramatic raid

Flash bangs and explosions explode inside the building, which is pictured moments before police (bottom right) charged inside

Earlier yesterday, as news of the hostage situation broke, police ordered all shops in Paris' famed Jewish district to be immediately closed.

The mayor's office in Paris announced the closures of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris' Marais neighbourhood, in the heart of the tourist district and about a kilometre away from the offices of newspaper Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

A 20-year-old student was among the hostages taken at the kosher shop in Paris. The young woman, whose name remains unknown, called her uncle who works nearby from the basement of the building where she was being held.

Earlier reports that there was a serious incident developing near the Trocadero in central Paris were incorrect - it remains open and running after what was a false alarm.

The siege at the grocery store occurred after the Charlie Hebdo killers in Dammartin-en-Goele found themselves holed up with a hostage at a business premises further north - and were believed to have made contact with an associate.

Police immediately scrambled phone signals in the area – but not before the killers were able to make their call.

It was feared that Said Kouachi and his brother Cherif contacted Amedy Coulibaly – and possibly ordered him to take hostages in a bid to force police to allow them to escape.

Strong links between the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly continue to emerge - including the phone calls between one of the Kouachi's wife and Coulibaly's wife Hayat Boumeddiene, revealed by Mr Molins on Friday.

Police were today interrogating the wives of the Kouachi brothers in a bid to track down Hayat Boumeddiene - who is now France's most wanted woman.

Boumeddiene, described as armed and dangerous, has been on the run since the slaying of rookie policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Phillipe, by Coulibaly.

Hundreds of phone calls between Boumeddiene and Izzana Hamyd, wife of Cherif Kouachi, have shown up on mobile records. Five hundred in all were made last year.

Also being held is the wife or girlfriend of the older Kouachi brother, Said.

French Algerian Boumeddiene is now not thought to have been with Coulibaly at any time in the Kosher Supermarket and to have fled immediately after the killing.

Radicalised: Hayat Boumeddiene (left) pictured with her husband Amedy Coulibaly (right) who is one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt in 48 hours of bloodshed

Police officers stop two people on a scooter at gunpoint as they arrived near the scene of the hostage taking yesterday

The pair are aggressively wrestled to the ground by police officers who were tasked with preventing anyone coming and going from the scene

A building is evacuated by members of the French special forces teams after at least six people were taken hostage by the gunman

A police officer is dressed in body armour as the hostage-taker was believed to be armed with assault rifles

A police officer takes aim upwards as he mans his position at the siege in eastern Paris

Police officers take aim as they huddle behind a car after there were reports the gunman was armed with heavy weapons

Police forces were stretched as they dealt with two hostage situations across Paris simultaneously

Rows of police vans sit parked at the side of the road while a solitary officer stands guard at the outskirts of the cordon

Cherif and Coulibaly were both part of the Buttes Chaumont gang - a group of extremists who came together in the early 2000s - and were both implicated in a plot to free jailed Islamist Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem in 2010.

As the two sieges by suspected Islamic terrorists yesterday played out at the same time, fears grew that the jihadis were looking to cause another bloodbath.

Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 27, was unarmed and directing traffic in Montrouge, in south Paris, when she was gunned down by Coulibay on Thursday.

A 20-YEAR-OLD STUDENT HOSTAGE: 'SHE WAS SHOPPING AT THE TIME'

A 20-year-old student was among the hostages taken at the kosher shop in Paris.

The young woman, whose name remains unknown, called her uncle who works nearby from the basement of the building where she was being held.

Jean-Marc Sellam, the business partner of her uncle Patrick Tuile told MailOnline that she had called her uncle 'panicked'.

He said: 'The niece of my associate was taken hostage. I think there were five people taken.

'His niece is about 20 years old. She was shopping at the time. She was allowed to speak to her uncle on the phone. She said she was scared and panicked. Police have now let her uncle go to the scene.'

Mr Sellam added: 'I am shocked. I have been for 48 hours. As long as they keep letting these barbaric people come back from Syria it will keep happening.'

The woman taken hostage was Jewish.

French police wearing body armour and carrying rifles stand guard at the cordoned off scene

Reports first claimed Coulibaly took at least six people hostage in the kosher grocery store but it was nearer to 20 by the time police stormed it

A hooded police officer armed with an assault rifle crosses a section of the ring road that circles Paris, near the hostage situation

A police officer instructs residents of the Paris suburb after the area ground to a standstill when shooting broke out

A special forces team member lead residents out of the area (left) while two others patrol the cordon (right)

Solidarity: Lights project 'Paris est Charlie' (Paris is Charlie) on to the Arc de Triomphe in a sign a defiance against the terrorists

Two of Coulibaly's relatives were arrested in nearby Grigny during a police raid this morning.

Like the Kouachi brothers, he is known to have been radicalised by an Islamic preacher in Paris, before expressing a wish to fight in Iraq or Syria. Both Said Kouachi, 34, and his brother, Cherif Kouachi, 33, were first arrested in 2005.

They were suspected members of the Buttes Chaumont – a group operating out of the 19th arrondissement of Paris and sending terrorist fighters to Iraq.

Cherif was convicted in 2008 to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for his association with the underground organisation.

He had wanted to fly to Iraq via Syria, and was found with a manual for a Kalashnikov – the automatic weapon used in Wednesday’s attack.

WHO ARE GIGN? THE ELITE FRENCH UNIT BROUGHT IN TO END THE TWO HOSTAGE DRAMAS

An elite French unit was brought in to bring an end to the two dramatic sieges yesterday.

The GIGN – Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale – is specially trained in counter-terrorism operations.

It was formed specifically to deal with highly-organised and heavily armed groups – and to respond to hostage situations.

The unit was formed in 1973 – a year after the Munich massacre during the Olympic Games. A study was launched in France into possible solutions to sudden and violent attacks.
Initially it consisted of just 15 members – but it gradually increased to 87 by 2000.

The GIGN – Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale – is specially trained in counter-terrorism operations

In 2007, it underwent a major reshuffle to form a new 380-member unit with the aim of being able to launch large-scale interventions and respond to mass hostage-taking situations.

Since it was formed, the group has launched more than a thousand operations and freed more than 500 hostages.

Among its best known interventions was the 1994 liberation of 229 passengers and crew from an Air France flight which had been hijacked by four terrorists.

As part of a vigorous training scheme, members are taught shooting, long-range marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat.

As well as weapons handling, they are put through their paces in airborne skills such as paragliding as well as swimming, diving and launching assaults on ships.

But their skills must also include undercover surveillance, bomb disposal and diplomacy techniques for siege situations.

They are taught to survive in some of the toughest conditions on the planet, including desert environments and in sub-zero terrain.

Dozens of police officers (pictured) surrounded the kosher bakery, where a gunman took many people hostage in a raid that ended in the deaths of four innocent people

Police cordons (pictured) were established to surround the kosher bakery, where women and children were among those held captive

Three officers mobilise in the Port de Vincennes area after what is France's second hostage situation to break out in the same day

A large shield and a pole used for breaking down doors are wheeled to the scene

Said was freed after questioning by police, but – like his brother – was known to have been radicalised after the Iraq War of 2003, when Anglo-American forces deposed Saddam Hussein.

Both brothers were said to be infuriated by the killing of Muslims by western soldiers and war planes.

Vincent Olliviers, Cherif’s lawyer at the time, described him as initially being an ‘apprentice loser - a delivery boy in a cap who smoked hashish and delivered pizzas to buy his drugs.

But Mr Ollivier said the ‘clueless kid who did not know what to do with his life met people who gave him the feeling of being important.’

After his short prison sentence, Cherif was in 2010 linked with a plot to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, the mastermind of the1995 bombing of the St Michel metro station in Paris that killed eight people and wounded more than 100 more.

Belkacem was a leading members of the GIA, or Armed Islamic Army – an Algerian terror outfit responsible for numerous atrocities.

The Kouachi brothers, who are orphans, were radicalised by an Iman operating in northern Paris.

SUSPECTED HOSTAGE TAKER A 'CLOSE ASSOCIATE' OF THE KOUACHI BROTHERS

The hostage taker of the Paris terror attack is a close associate of the Kouachi brothers, who killed 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo massacre two days ago and died earlier yesterday in a shootout with police.

Sources in the Paris police said the suspected murderer Amedy Coulibay, 32, was wearing body armour and brandishing two Kalashnikov automatic weapons.

It's thought that he was of Senegalese origin and attended the Addawa Mosque in Paris with the Kouachi brothers.

As part of a jihadist cell with Said and Cherif Kouachi, he was involved in the failed prison break attempt of Smain Ait Ali Belkacem - the mastermind behind a wave of bombings in France in 1995 which killed eight people and wounded 120.

Coulibay, who was himself jailed in 2010 for his involvement in the plot, had a long history of both petty and serious crimes.

The only boy born in a family of 10 in Juvisy, Essonne, he first came to police attention as a 17-year-old delinquent.

Convictions for theft and drug offences followed. In September 2002 in Orleans, Loiret, he was arrested for the armed robbery of a bank.

It's believed he became involved with the younger of the Kouachi brothers, Cherif, when he was part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in Iraq.

Kouachi was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

Coulibaly is thought to have become radicalised when he came under the influence of Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian convicted of terrorism.

Beghal was once accused of being Osama Bin Laden’s main European recruiter and has been linked with Cherif Kouachi.

Coulibaly admitted to police he saw Beghal every three weeks but purely for ‘religious instruction.’ It is understood that he married Hayat Boumeddiene in a religious ceremony after she waited four years for him to come out of jail following his conviction for armed robbery.

The couple were never married in a civil ceremony – the only marriage legally accepted in France.

They were raised in foster care in Rennes, in western France, with Cherif training as a fitness instructor before moving to Paris.

They lived in the 19th arrondissement and were radicalised by Farid Benyettou, a janitor-turned-preacher who gave sermons calling for jihad in Iraq and suicide bombings.

His Buttes-Chaumont recruitment group, named after a Paris park, sent at least a dozen young men to fight in Iraq.

The Kouachis share similar backgrounds to Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old French Algerian responsible for murdering seven people, including four Jews and three Muslim soldiers, in the Toulouse area in 2012.

Merah, who was himself shot dead by police, had also been left to operate as a terrorist in France, despite the authorities knowing he had trained with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Last year Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French Algerian, was arrested in Marseille in connection with an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels which left four people dead. He denies any crimes, and is currently on remand in Belgium.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Hunt for France's most wanted woman: Police interrogate wives of Charlie Hebdo gunmen as they battle to track down supermarket gunman's jihadist girlfriend

• Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is the 'wife' of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman and four hostages in a kosher bakery
  
• Coulibaly was then killed as commandos stormed the building
  
• Accomplice Boumeddiene is on the loose as police warn she is dangerous
• Hundreds of phone calls were made between her and the wife of one of the Charlie Hebdo killers last year
• Police are interrogating wives of Said and Cherif Kouachi in a bid to track down Boumeddiene
• Kouachi brothers were killed as they tried to fight their way out of a print works 25 miles from Paris

By Fidelma Cook and Peter Allen In France and Jenny Stanton For Mailonline
Published: 16:36 GMT, 9 January 2015 | Updated: 11:07 GMT, 10 January 2015

Police were today interrogating the wives of the Kouachi brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in a bid to track down France’s most wanted woman – Hayat Boumeddiene.

Boumeddiene, described as armed and dangerous, has been on the run since the slaying of rookie policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Phillipe, by her terrorist husband Amedy Coulibaly.

Hundreds of phone calls between Boumeddiene and Izzana Hamyd, wife of Cherif Kouachi, have shown up on mobile records. Five hundred in all were made last year.

Also being held is the wife or girlfriend of the older Kouachi brother, Said.

French Algerian Boumeddiene is now not thought to have been with Coulibaly at any time in the Kosher Supermarket and to have fled immediately after the killing.

Wearing a skimpy bikini with her arms wrapped around her lover's waist, this is Boumeddiene before she turned into a jihadi killer's accomplice and became France's most wanted woman.

Radicalised: Hayat Boumeddiene (left) pictured with her husband Amedy Coulibaly (right) who is one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt in 48 hours of bloodshed

'Armed and dangerous': It is becoming clear that the one-time cashier was radicalised after meeting the man she would marry

Photographs of the 'wife' of the Kosher supermarket hostage killer reveal how she was radicalised by the man she would go on to marry.

Her husband Amedy Coulibaly is dead, one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt in 48 hours of bloodshed.

Now, 26-year-old Boumeddiene is on the run and is believed to be 'armed and dangerous'.

Coulibaly died in a hail of bullets along with four hostages in the storming of the Jewish supermarket.

The couple 'married' in a religious ceremony after Boumedienne, who was never seen without her veil, waited four years for him to come out of jail following his conviction for armed robbery.

The couple were never married in a civil ceremony – the only form of marriage legally accepted in France.

Jihadi couple: Boumeddiene (right) walked away from a low-paid job as a cashier in 2009 and started wearing a veil. She ‘devoted herself’ to Coulibaly (left)

'Cool and composed': Boumeddiene never wavered under police cross examination. When told they knew she and Coulibaly had visited Beghal at the same time as Cherif Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists, she replied: 'We went there for crossbow practice'

Cornered: French police named the hostage taker as Amedy Coulibaly (left), 32, but Boumeddiene (right), 26, is not thought to have been at his side at the time

Stunned: A 27-year-old Coulibaly (pictured) once 'gushed' with excitement when he was hand-picked to meet former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy

While Coulibaly had a well documented track record, details of Boumeddiene's troubled childhood are only now emerging.

Like her husband she was born into a large family, seven children, in 1988 but when she was just six years old, her mother died.

The eldest children left home, according to reports in Le Parisien, and social workers took over. It is suggested that Boumeddiene may have been put into care.

Estranged from her father, she met him briefly once more and introduced him to Coulibaly.

But all may not have been as settled as the young woman, radicalised by her husband, thought.

It is understood he had made it clear he wanted to take a second wife, according to other reports.

Today, questioned by police at his home in Nanterre, a Paris suburb, Boumeddiene’s father is said to be shocked and unable to believe that his daughter was involved with the terrorist cell.

But it is becoming clear that the one-time cashier was radicalised after meeting the man she would marry.

She is from an Algerian background and altered her surname to ‘make it sound more French', according to an investigating source.

She told police who interviewed her as part of their inquiries into Coulibaly’s murky dealings with Islamic extremists that she had walked away from a low-paid job as a cashier in the Juvisy suburb of Paris in 2009 and taken the veil. She ‘devoted herself’ to Coulibaly.

Interrogated by police in 2010, Boumeddiene said she was inspired by her husband and the radicals she lived with to ‘read a lot of books on religion and because of this, I came to ask questions on religion’.

‘When I saw the massacre of the innocents in Palestine, in Iraq, in Chetchna, in Afghanistan or anywhere the Americans sent their bombers, all that… well, who are the terrorists?'

She added that when Americans killed innocents, it was the right of men to defend their women and children.

Always cool and composed, Boumeddiene never wavered under police cross examination.

Going in: Special forces storm the Jewish grocery to the east of Paris where terrorist Amedey Coulibaly had taken at least seven people hostage

Chilling: The body of a man can be seen at the entrance of the Jewish supermarket after it was stormed by commandos

Terrified: Hostages - who had been held for hours with Coulibaly threatening to kill them - flee from the shop, crying with relief

Wanted: Police issued this picture describing the couple as suspects in the shooting dead of a female police officer at Montrouge

When told that they knew she and Coulibaly had visited Beghal at the same time as Cherif Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists, jihadi recruiter Ahmed Laidouni, and Farid Melouk of GIA, she replied: 'We went there for crossbow practice.’

The couple lived in nearby Bagneux, where they were known as a devoutly religious couple, despite Coulibaly’s regular run-ins with the law.

To neighbours the pair were quiet, respectful and normal and had even gone on a holiday to Malaysia together.

But a month ago they simply disappeared from their suburban house until flashed across the world’s screens today.

Coulibaly murdered at least four hostages at the Kosher supermarket in Paris, according to Reuters news agency.

He is believed to be part of an Al Qaeda terror cell linked to a British-based jihadi extremist, Djamel Beghal.

The 50-year-old preacher, who recruited terrorists while worshipping at London's Finsbury Park mosque, met Cherif Kouachi while in prison in Paris.

Armed: Dozens of police officers took refuge outside the Kosher bakery in Vincennes, where Ademy Coulibaly was holding hostages

Ultimatum: The hostage taker threatened to kill the remaining captives if the Charlie Hebdo attackers were raided

Coulibaly has a long history of both petty and serious crimes. The only boy born in a family of ten in Juvisy, Essonne, he first came to police attention as a 17-year-old delinquent.

Convictions for theft and drug offences followed. In September 2002 in Orleans, Loiret, he was arrested for the armed robbery of a bank.

It's believed he became involved with the younger of the Kouachi brothers, Cherif, when he was part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in Iraq. Kouachi was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

The two sieges by suspected Islamic terrorists played out at the same time, as fears grew that they would be looking to cause another bloodbath.

Coulibaly is believed to be the one responsible for shooting a policewoman dead in south Paris on Thursday.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Quick-thinking hostages 'texted with police', hid in fridge under Charlie Hebdo gunmen's noses

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 12:46pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 10 January, 2015, 12:51pm

Agence France-Presse in Paris

Members of the French police special forces evacuate hostages including a child (centre) after launching the assault at a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris. Photo: AFP

From the father who hid his toddler inside a supermarket refrigerator to the employee who texted tactical information to police from beneath a sink, authorities praised the quick instincts of survivors in the hostage incidents that gripped France on Friday.

At the printworks office besieged by two gunmen believed to have carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre, one employee took refuge under a sink in the canteen upstairs and, though terrified, overcame his fear and communicated with police outside via text message.

The employee, 26-year-old graphic designer named Lilian, sent police “tactical elements such as his location inside the premises”, a source said.

Lilian could hear the suspects talking, which both helped reassure him and gave him more information to send to the forces outside, the source said. Another source said the hidden employee was also able to communicate with a family member via text.

The gunmen – identified as brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who had been on the run since allegedly slaughtering 12 people at the weekly magazine Charle Hebdo‘s offices in Paris on Wednesday – had been cornered at the printing office after a firefight with police which Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said left Said with a minor neck wound.

They had a hefty cache of arms including Molotov cocktails and a loaded rocket-launcher.

The brothers had taken the store manager hostage, but later released him after he helped Said with his wound as the second man hid upstairs, said Molins.

Police gather outside the supermarket, where the body of gunman Amedy Coulibaly, said to be an ally of the Charlie Hebdo shooters, lay dead (left). Photo: EPA

Some 40 kilometres away, shortly before 1pm, a father named Ilan and his three-year-old son were at a kosher supermarket in Vincennes when Amedy Coulibaly, believed to be an ally of the Kouachi brothers, burst into the store and pulled out a Kalashnikov.

The father and son quickly hid in the supermarket’s refrigeration unit, two relatives told AFP.

At least three other people were with them, according to sources close to the investigation.

Ilan, in his 30s, quickly removed his jacket and wrapped his son in it to protect the toddler from the frigid temperatures. Hidden in the cold, they and the other hostages remained in the refrigerator for nearly five hours.

Meanwhile, Ilan’s mother realised quickly that her son and grandson were hidden and decided not to try to contact them, even by text.

Instead she gave Ilan’s mobile phone number to law enforcement, who were able to use it to track the location of the man, his son and the other hostages inside the store.

Cherif (left) and Said Kouachi were killed by police after they beseiged a printing office near Paris, just 12 kilometres from the Charles de Gaulle airport. Photo: AFP

This knowledge, according to the prosecutor, may have contributed to their survival when police finally stormed the store and killed Coulibaly.

By the end of the siege, four hostages would be dead.

Meanwhile, in Dammartin-en-Goele, as police launched their assault on the printing works, an armoured car gave them access to the upper floor to free the hidden employee, a source said.

The employee, unharmed, was taken to police headquarters, where he was quickly reunited with his family, another source close to the case said, adding that the young man was “shocked” but “OK”.

Ilan was debriefed by intelligence services late Friday and his mother was recovering after several hours of anguish.

 

[PressForNirvana]

Hong Kong cartoonists reflect on massacre at Paris magazine

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 4:53am
UPDATED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 4:53am

Amy Nip [email protected]

Illustration by Hong Kong cartoonist Collins Yeung pay tribute to the victims of the attack on a Paris magazine.

Tears leak from the nib of a fountain pen set against darkness, in a Hong Kong illustration about a tragedy thousands of kilometres away.

It is local cartoonist Zunzi's way of expressing his grief over shootings at an outspoken French magazine in Paris last week that left 12 dead - one of whom he knew personally.

The artist, whose real name is Wong Kei-kwan, was a friend of Jean Cabut of Charlie Hebdo, who went by the pen name Cabu.

Cabu was controversial for his drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, but it was his attitude that left an impression - he prided himself as a journalist who would probe and research a topic to understand it.

That struck a chord with Wong, who switched from newspaper reporting three decades ago and is now one of the city's few artists who still draw political cartoons for a living.

He said cartoonists, like doctors, had to tackle a set of problems specific to a community.

Illustration by Hong Kong cartoonist Zunzi pay tribute to the victims of the attack on a Paris magazine.

Europe had a complicated history scarred with two world wars, racial tension and rivalries among countries, he said. Cartoonists did not hesitate to depict all sorts of taboos and were often threatened and assaulted.

Hong Kong cartoonists were spared the physical violence, but faced an invisible hand of interference instead, Wong said.

"After the second world war, there were more than 20 local newspapers. Every one carried political cartoons. Now, except for a few newspapers, most do not publish such cartoons, simply to avoid trouble."

Political cartoons about the city are increasing on the internet. But censorship by the mainstream media ensures few other outlets are available and no income for the creators.

White Water, who draws the Boiling Frog series on Facebook, recalled feedback about the work he had handed to several newspapers: "I like your work, but can you not draw political cartoons?"

A Hongkonger, he also received insults after posting cartoons on topics such as conflicts with the mainland.

Some newspapers banned illustrations of politicians who were their allies, an artist said on condition of anonymity. "Not only can we not make fun of them, they cannot appear in cartoons at all."

Another cartoonist, Cuson Lo Chi-kong, once had his Facebook account suspended after he uploaded a drawing mocking the State Council's June white paper about "one country, two systems". Facebook had received complaints that the artwork contained dubious content.

"My role is to help the public express their views and vent their frustration," Lo said. "When they 'like' or 'share' my cartoons online, they have somehow made their views clear."

Post cartoonist Harry Harrison said he faced only the occasional quibble. "Your policemen are always too fat," went one complaint.

He would handle sensitive topics with care, he said. "I saw a cartoon of the Prophet with a pig's body [after the Paris case]. It is an attack on ordinary Muslims, which is not helpful at all."

 

[PressForNirvana]

Partner of French attacker in Syria, sources say

Sources believe the fourth suspect in the Paris attacks had already left country

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 3:14am
UPDATED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 9:30am

Reuters in Paris

Pencils are held up in Caen in support of the magazine.

The suspected female accomplice of Islamists behind attacks in Paris left France last week and travelled to Syria via Turkey, a source familiar with the situation said yesterday.

Suspect Hayat Boumeddiene

French police were searching for 26-year-old old Hayat Boumeddiene, believed to be the partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman on Thursday and four people at a Jewish supermarket on Friday.

Boumeddiene and Coulibaly, who later died in a siege at the shop, had links to the two brothers who carried out the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo weekly on Wednesday. They were also killed after they took a hostage at a print works on Friday.

Police had listed Boumeddiene a suspect in the shooting of the policewoman, describing her as "armed and dangerous".

However, the latest information means she was already out of the country at the time of the attacks, the source said.

French media earlier released photos purporting to be of a fully veiled Boumeddiene, posing with a crossbow, in what they said was a 2010 training session in the mountainous Cantal region.

Le Monde daily said Boumeddiene wed Amedy Coulibaly in a religious ceremony in 2009.

The hunt for the last suspect came as hundreds of troops were deployed around Paris, beefing up security on the eve of a march expected to draw more than a million in tribute to the victims.

The participation of European leaders including Germany's Angela Merkel and Britain's David Cameron in the silent march through Paris with President Francois Hollande will pose further demands for security forces today. "We remain at risk, and we will maintain the highest level of security in comings weeks," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency cabinet meeting.

In a taste of what was to come, people poured on to the streets in Nice, Pau and Orleans in poignantly silent marches paying tribute to those killed.

Political and security chiefs were reviewing how two French-born brothers of Algerian extraction, Said and Cherif Kouachi, could have carried out the Charlie Hebdo attacks despite having been on surveillance and "no-fly" lists for many years.

Before they were killed, the brothers said they were acting on behalf of al-Qaeda in Yemen.

An audio recording on YouTube attributed to a leader of the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda said the attack in France was prompted by insults to the Prophet Mohammed.

Harith al-Nadhari also chillingly warned France to "stop your aggression against the Muslims" or face further attacks.

In light of those comments, Hollande warned the danger to France was not over yet.

"These madmen, fanatics, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion," Hollande added in a televised address.

Before Coulibaly- who met Cherif Kouachi in prison - was killed by police in the assault on the Jewish store, he said he was a member of the Islamic State jihadist group.

Additional reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse