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Shortly before black-masked gunmen stormed the east Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, an image went out from the satirical magazine's Twitter account. Poking fun at Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State organisation, the caricature depicted him speaking into a microphone, offering new year's greetings and wishes of good health.
The spoof captured the spirit of an irreverent French institution that on Wednesday became the site of a national tragedy. The gunmen struck at 11.30am, a strategic time when the weekly paper that had made Islam one of its many targets was holding a key editorial meeting.
Within a few violent moments, some of the most provocative voices in French journalism were extinguished - including the paper's chief editor, Stephane Charbonnier, and some of France's top cartoonists, including Jean Cabut, Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac. A paper that for the past several years had bitterly defended its right to lampoon Islam, just as any other juicy target, found itself paying the highest price.
"It's as if Matt Groening of the Simpsons had been assassinated, somebody everybody knows, who makes quips at society," said Laurence Grove, author of Comics in French: The European Bande Dessinee in Context. "Okay, they are a little bit more rude and daring than Matt Groening would be, but it's at that level of everyday knowledge in France. Everybody knows Charlie Hebdo. Everybody laughs at it, or is disgusted by it or disapproves, but everybody knows it."
The successor of a satirical magazine first founded in the 1960s, Charlie Hebdo held few things sacred. And that's why French of a certain stripe held it dear. You name it, and Charlie Hebdo lampooned it. The birth of Jesus Christ. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Jewish rabbis. The outlandish antics of the far right.
It seemed to thrive in hot water, purveying a particular brand of French humour for street sweepers and intellectuals alike. In a previous incarnation, when the publication was named Hara-Kiri Hebdo, a cartoon spoofing the 1970 death of Charles de Gaulle earned it a ban by the French government. Its publishers found a loophole by renaming it Charlie Hebdo, an homage to Charlie Brown cartoons as well as a sly reference to the de Gaulle comic.
But without doubt, its most polemical publications revolved around Islam.
In 2006, Charlie Hebdo was one of several European publications to reprint cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, including one showing the Prophet with a bomb fuse under his turban. In 2007, several French Muslim organisations sued the magazine for insulting their religion but lost in court.
Emboldened, the magazine did not hold back. In an infamous 2011 cover, it jokingly renamed itself Charia Hebdo, a crude play on "sharia", or strict Islamic law. Mohammed was depicted on the cover, saying, "100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter".
Charlie Hebdo's headquarters was firebombed the next day. The attack destroyed the offices but injured no one.
"This is the first time we have been physically attacked, but we won't let it get to us," Charbonnier, who was known by the pen name "Charb", pledged after the attack.
Six days later the magazine published a front page depicting a male Charlie Hebdo cartoonist passionately kissing a bearded Muslim man in front of the charred aftermath of the bombing. The headline was "L'Amour plus fort que la haine" - Love is stronger than hate.
After the bombing, the paper moved to a nondescript location in an office building in Paris, initially guarded by riot police.
In September 2012, Charlie Hebdo chose its next moment, after a low-budget American anti-Islam film sparked riots in the Middle East.
The images of a disrobed Mohammed in the paper came amid an already tense international environment. The French police called Charbonnier and asked the magazine to reconsider publishing the cartoons. When the editor declined to do so, law enforcement once again stationed riot police outside Charlie Hebdo's offices, and the government moved to temporarily close embassies, cultural centres and schools in 20 countries out of fear of reprisals.
At the time, the US White House criticised the decision to publish the cartoons. "We don't question the right of something like this to be published, we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it," press secretary Jay Carney said.
Gerard Biard, the editor-in-chief, rejected the criticism. "We're a newspaper that respects French law," he said. "Now, if there's a law that is different in Kabul or Riyadh, we're not going to bother ourselves with respecting it."
In January 2013 Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon book, The Life of Mohammed, sparking another fierce debate over freedom of expression in France. Its cover pictured a goofy-looking Prophet leading a sweating camel through the desert. Charbonnier said the "biography" was "authorised by Islam since it was edited by Muslims".
The magazine's cover last week features Michel Houellebecq's provocative new novel, Submission, which imagines France being ruled by a Muslim president.
The Danish editor who triggered global protests by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed said Charlie Hebdo had "paid the highest price" for defending press freedom.
" Charlie Hebdo didn't shut up … and they have now paid the highest price for that," former culture editor Flemming Rose told Jyllands-Posten.
The newspaper, where he is now a foreign affairs editor, reportedly raised security after the deadly Paris attack.
"Here at Jyllands-Posten we live with extensive security measures. There have been a whole raft of incidents concerning Islam and violence" over the past 10 years or so, Rose said.
In 2013, Charbonnier appeared on a "Wanted Dead or Alive" list published in al-Qaeda's magazine, Inspire.
" Charlie Hebdo became a symbol," said Louis Caprioli, former counter-terrorism head at France's DST intelligence agency.
"They never forgot nor forgave what they considered a supreme insult. The choice of this target is highly symbolic: they targeted secularists who dared to mock the Prophet. In their eyes, it's divine vengeance."
In a tragic irony, Charbonnier's last cartoon predicted his own death. The latest edition of the weekly shows a gun-toting Islamic terrorist saying: "Still no attacks in France? Wait - we've still got until the end of January to present our best wishes."
The comment was typical of Charbonnier, who was always defiant, calling it an issue of democracy, freedom of speech and, in short, the right to laugh.
"The accusation that we are pouring oil on the flames really gets on my nerves," Charbonnier told the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2012 after the disrobed Mohammed cartoon was published. "After the publication of this absurd and grotesque film about Mohammed in the US, other newspapers have responded to the protests with cover stories. We are doing the same thing, but with drawings.
"And a drawing has never killed anyone."
The Washington Post, The Guardian, Agence France-Presse
Paris attacks: hostage Michel Catalano tells how he survived by making terrorists cups of coffee
Businessman Michel Catalano managed to survive an encounter with the murderous Kouachi brothers by making the terrorists cups of coffee and bandaging their wounds
By Bill Gardner, and Martin Evans in Dammartin-en-Groele
8:20AM GMT 11 Jan 2015
Glancing through his rain-streaked office window early on Friday morning, Michel Catalano knew something bad was about to happen.
Striding towards him across the car park, a man dressed in combat clothing was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle and a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder.
Within minutes the businessman had been taken hostage in his own building by two of the most wanted men in the world, as thousands of armed police closed in.
Mr Catalano gave an incredible account of the two terrifying hours he spent in the company of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi as they made their final, bloody stand. During the ordeal he made the brothers cups of coffee and even dressed their wounds after they battled with police.
Later the pair let him go free, shortly before they were cut down during an explosive raid by French commandos.
Mr Catalano told how he turned up at his CDT printworks at Dammartin-en-Goële as normal at around 8 o’clock on Friday morning. Shortly afterwards, his employee Lilian Lepere, 27, arrived. It was then, through the giant window on the first floor, that he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.
Speaking outside his home on Saturday, he said: “I could see that there was a man with a rocket launcher and a Kalashnikov and I could immediately see that we were in a situation of danger.”
It was clear that these were the Kouachi brothers, and they were hunting for a hiding place. Within seconds, they were knocking at his door.
Turning to a terrified Mr Lepere, the businessman told the graphic designer to hide at the back of the building.
“Then I turned back because I knew that the two of us couldn’t hide… and I must admit that I thought at that point that was the end, that was the end of it,” he said.
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi
Trembling, he walked to the front door where he knew the fugitives were waiting, expecting to be cut down by bullets.
Instead, he heard a calm, quiet voice saying: “Don’t worry, we just want to come in.” Marching inside, the terrorists were sodden and exhausted from their days on the run. Earlier that morning they had hijacked a Peugeot 206 being driven by a woman teacher near 30 miles north-east of Paris. Dozens of police cars had chased them along the N2 highway towards Paris. During the chase, shots were exchanged.
Scrambling out of the vehicle, the brothers decided on the printworks to make their final stand.
Mr Catalano realised he had to keep the brothers from exploring the back of the office, where he knew his young employee was hiding. So he offered to make the exhausted pair a cup of coffee. Gratefully, the murderers gulped down their hot drinks as their weapons hung loosely at their sides.
“They weren’t aggressive,” the businessman said.
The ruined building, with the hijacked Peugeot
Then, around 45 minutes later, there was another knock at the door. Looking out of the window, Mr Catalano saw a salesman named Didier from one his suppliers, standing in the rain. Turning back to the terrorists, he told them the visitor had “nothing to do” with his business, and asked if he could be let go.
To his surprise, the terrorists nodded their agreement, and one of the brothers walked with the businessman to the door.
Didier later told France Info radio: “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.
“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, told him: “Leave, we don’t kill civilians anyhow.’’
“That really struck me, so I decided to call the police,” Didier said. “I guess it was one of the terrorists.”
When the door closed again, the brothers seemed to decide that they would never leave the printworks alive. “They said that anyway it’s going to finish there,” Mr Catalano said.
The pair even allowed the businessman to call police to say the terrorists had arrived, and were waiting for them.
Explosions and gunfire were seen and heard during the police raid
Standing in the warehouse together, all three men knew the final battle would soon begin. They only had to wait a matter of minutes. When the brothers saw the hundreds of gendarmes arriving, they fired a volley of shots from their Kalashnikovs.
Mr Catalano dived into his office, where he hid, expecting to die. When the firing stopped he heard footsteps and prayed it was the police.
Yet it was one of the brothers, calling politely: “Where are you Monsieur? Where are you sir?”
“Don’t worry, I’m here,” the businessman replied, as his heart sank.
“I was just terrified that they were going to the end, as I didn’t know where Lilian was hidden,” he said.
Now the Kouachis knew the endgame had come; that they would soon attain the martyrdom that they craved. Yet they were jumpy and clearly frightened by the prospect of death.
The tension unnerved Mr Catalano, who noticed that blood was oozing from a cut on Saïd Kouachi’s forehead.
“When I felt that one of them was tense, I said: ‘Look, if you want I could look after you,’ so he sat down and I helped him with a plaster.” The bandage was too tight, and the terrorist protested. So the businessman carefully wrapped it again, until Kouachi was comfortable.
At that point, Mr Catalano felt brave enough to ask if he could leave, before the police closed in.
At first, Saïd refused to let him escape, replying “Not immediately.” But eventually the elder brother relented, saying “Go on.” Making his way to the door, Mr Catalano wrestled with whether he should tell the brothers about Lilian, hiding only yards away. Perhaps they might let him go, too.
“That was the most difficult thing for me,” he said. But he decided that telling the terrorists could put the young man at more risk, so he walked outside where the gendarmes were waiting. “I don’t know how I managed to stay calm. I stayed calm throughout,” he said.
“In fact they weren’t aggressive as far as I was concerned. Even when they shot at the gendarmes, I didn’t get the impression that they were going to harm me, even if that seems to be unbelievable. But that’s precisely the situation I found myself in.
“Possibly they had an ounce of humanity, as far as I was concerned, because they let me out.”
But the brothers’ new-found humanity may have been tested, had they known that commandos were being tipped off about their every move.
Hiding under a sink in a locked room just yards away, Lilian Lepere was alerting police about the location of the gunmen and the layout of the building. For more than six hours the graphic designer passed on crucial information.
Mr Lepere had first sent a text message to his father, saying: “I am hidden on the first floor. I think they have killed everyone. Tell the police to intervene.”
As snipers took up positions on surrounding rooftops and helicopters buzzed overhead, he continued to talk to special forces.
After Mr Catalano had gone, the brothers were gearing up for the final reckoning. Then the phone rang, and Chérif picked up the receiver. On the other end of the line was the French journalist Igor Sahiri, of BFM TV.
Kouachi told him: “We are just telling you we are the defenders of the prophet and that I, Chérif Kouachi, have been sent by al-Qaeda of Yemen and that I went over there and that Anwar al-Awlaki financed me.”
Asked if he intended to kill more civilians, Kouachi replied: “Did we kill any civilians in the past two days when you were looking for us? Come on. We are not killers, we are the defenders of the Prophet, and we kill those who insult him.”
Mr Sahiri said that Kouachi had sounded like he was “ready to die”.
He said: “It was somebody very serene. He was very calm. It was just like a normal discussion, no rudeness. The way he was breathless made me feel that this guy was very aware of what would happen at this time.”
At around 4pm French time, police launched their assault on the building. Dramatic footage showed flashes of light and rapid gunfire.
Minutes before the explosions, balaclava-clad officers were seen moving towards the building. Soon, after a short but intense battle, both Kouachi brothers lay dead.
Mr Lepere was still recovering from his ordeal on Saturday and was being comforted by his parents at their modest bungalow just a few hundred yards from the scene of Friday’s drama. He was said to be traumatised by the experience.
Mr Lepere, who lives with his girlfriend in a flat 14 miles from Dammartin in the town of Meaux, returned to his parents’ home accompanied by officers from the Gendarmerie. He arrived with his head covered, and left around an hour later with a hood pulled over his face.
His father, Pascal, said: “He is fine but as a family, we are still trying to come to terms with it.”
On Saturday, the shattered building showed the force of the attack. Glass lay strewn outside the entrance, while scorch marks from a bomb blast could be seen above a double window.
The car the terrorists hijacked was still parked outside. Bullet holes had smashed the windows, and a tyre was missing. At the back of the warehouse, huge pieces of the wall had been ripped away by an explosion.
A small French flag fluttered from the roof of the blackened building.
Man who filmed Paris police assassination regrets video
Date January 12, 2015 - 3:46AM
A screen grab from the video filmed by Jordi Mir, which shows police officer Ahmed Merabet being gunned down by the Kouachi brothers. Photo: Jordi Mir
Paris: The man whose amateur video of a Paris police officer's cold-blooded murder shocked the world now regrets sharing the footage online, saying he never expected it to be broadcast so widely.
Engineer Jordi Mir said he posted the video out of fear and a "stupid reflex" fostered by years on social media.
"I was completely panicked," he told AP in an exclusive interview across from the Parisian boulevard where the officer was shot by terrorists on Wednesday morning.
The short film immediately became the most arresting image of France's three-day-long drama, which began with a mass killing at the headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended Friday with the death of four hostages and the three terrorists in two separate shoot-outs.
The events were marked in Paris on Sunday with a mass rally drawing as many as a million people.
"I had to speak to someone," Mr Mir said. "I was alone in my flat. I put the video on Facebook. That was my error."
He said he left the video on Facebook for as little as 15 minutes before thinking the better of it and taking it down.
It was too late.
The footage had already been shared across the site and someone uploaded it to YouTube. Less than an hour after Mr Mir removed the video from his page, he was startled to find it playing across his television screen.
In its unedited form, the 42-second film shows two masked gunmen – brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi – as they walk toward a prone police officer, later identified as 42-year-old Ahmed Merabet.
"You want to kill us?" one of the brothers says as he strides toward the wounded officer.
"No, it's OK, boss," Mr Merabet says, raising his hand in an apparent plea for mercy.
Then he's shot in the head.
The video unleashed a worldwide wave of revulsion. British tabloids described it as "shocking" and "sickening". France's Le Figaro ran a still from the footage on its front page over a caption which read "War". CNN's Randi Kaye called it "an unforgettable image forever associated with this horrible attack".
The video's republication by media organisations around the world has anguished Merabet's family.
"How dare you take that video and broadcast it?" Mr Merabet's brother Malek asked journalists on Saturday.
"I heard his voice. I recognised him. I saw him get slaughtered and I hear him get slaughtered every day."
Mr Mir wanted Mr Merabet's family to know he was "very sorry," saying that he had turned down offers to buy the footage and that he wanted media organisations to blur Mr Merabet's image before running it.
Some argue that the video plays a useful role by exposing terrorists' heartlessness. Mr Mir said that one official told him the video helped galvanise French public opinion.
Nevertheless, Mr Mir said that, if he could do it all again, he would have kept the video off Facebook.
"On Facebook, there's no confidentiality," he said. "It's a lesson for me."
France gunman pledges loyalty to IS in posthumous video
By LORI HINNANT
Jan. 11, 2015 1:43 PM EST
This photo provided by the Paris Police Prefecture Friday, Jan. 9, 2015 shows Amedy Coulibaly A suspect in the kosher market attack. A police official says the man who has taken at least five people hostage in a kosher market on the eastern edges of Paris Friday appears linked to the newsroom massacre earlier this week that left 12 people dead. Paris police released a photo of Amedy Coulibaly as a suspect in the killing Thursday of a policewoman, and the official named him as the man holed up in the market. He said the man is armed with an automatic rifle and some hostages have been gravely wounded. He said a second suspect, a woman named Hayat Boumddiene, is the gunman's accomplice. (AP Photo/Prefecture de Police de Paris)
PARIS (AP) — The gunman in the Paris kosher supermarket siege appeared Sunday in a posthumous video, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and explaining the planning and the reasoning behind the attacks that sowed terror across France.
Apparently filmed over several days and edited after the attacks, the video shows Amedy Coulibaly displaying a small arsenal of weapons, doing pushups and pullups in a drab courtyard and, in broken Arabic, giving fealty to IS militants. The video appeared Sunday on militant websites, and two men who dealt drugs with Coulibaly confirmed his identify to The Associated Press.
"My brothers, our team, divided things in two," he tells the camera in a close-up.
"We did things a bit together and a bit apart, so that it'd have more impact," he said in fluent French, adding that he had helped the brothers financially with "a few thousand euros" so they could finish with purchases for the operation.
The two men who methodically killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, told survivors they were from al-Qaida in Yemen, and the terror group claimed responsibility for the attack. But the ties among the men date back to 2005, long before IS had come into being and well before Said Kouachi is believed to have traveled to Yemen.
Wearing a black jacket and cap, and seated calmly alongside an assault rifle and beneath an Islamic flag used by the extremist group, Coulibaly explained why the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish store were targeted.
"What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are doing," he said.
The weekly newspaper lampooned religions of all kinds, and Islam was a frequent target of its satire. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after it reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and its editor had a police bodyguard, who was the first to die.
After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, the Kouachi brothers led police on a chase for two days and were then cornered Friday at a printing house near Charles de Gaulle Airport. Within hours, Coulibaly — who had by then already killed a policewoman and attacked a jogger — took over the kosher market in eastern Paris with hostages inside, threatening to kill them all unless police let the Kouachis go.
Coulibaly, who prosecutors said killed four people at the market, died when police stormed the building. That raid took place just minutes after security forces killed the Kouachi brothers.
All three attackers were French.
"We are going to have to determine the conditions in which this video was posted," said Bernard Petit, the head of the Paris judicial police, on France's TF1 TV.
About 400 police investigators are working nearly around the clock on the case, he said. "Obviously, we're going to be interested in any people who received and broadcast this video," he added.
After speaking in French in the video, Coulibaly continues in broken Arabic, stumbling over words he can't pronounce that he seems to be reading from a paper. He mangles grammar as he gives his allegiance to the head of the Islamic State group. He repeats a pact that other loyalists have used to pledge fealty to the militant group and then calls for others to carry out similar attacks.
The French ambassador to the U.S. said there are thousands of young Islamic radicals in Europe, stressing that authorities can't arrest people because of their ideas.
"We have, in France, hundreds of young people who came to Syria or who came to Yemen and were getting their military training," Gerard Araud told ABC's "This Week."
"We don't know when these people are coming back and whether they are coming back. And we don't know when ... these radical people are going suddenly to become terrorists," he said.
In Germany, arsonists early Sunday attacked a newspaper that republished Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, and two men were detained. No one was hurt in the fire, but the newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost said several files in its archives were destroyed.
Coulibaly's widow, who has been named as an accomplice, is believed to have traveled to a Turkish city near the Syrian border, and then all traces of her were lost, according to a Turkish intelligence official, who wasn't authorized to speak by name to reporters.
One fellow drug dealer from the Paris suburb of Bretigny said Coulibaly regularly sold marijuana and hashish to high school students, and as recently as a month ago, was still dealing dope. That man and another fellow drug dealer identified him as the man in the video released Sunday. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid problems with the police.
Five people with ties to the Kouachi brothers detained in connection with the attacks have been released, the Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman said Sunday. Family members of the attackers have been given preliminary charges, but prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said no one remained in detention over the attacks that left France a changed country.
___
Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten, Raphael Satter and Trung Latieule in Paris; Diaa Hadid in Beirut; and Desmond Butler in Istanbul contributed to this report.
Paris attack: Hayat Boumeddiene entered Syria, says Turkey, insisting its not at fault
Date January 13, 2015 - 5:56AM
Hayat Boumeddiene (right) presenting her passport at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul on January 2. Photo: AFP
Turkey on Monday said that the wanted partner of one of the gunmen behind the terror attacks in France crossed into Syria last week, insisting it was not at fault for failing to detain her.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Hayat Boumeddiene had crossed into Syria on January 8, the same day that her partner Amedy Coulibaly is suspected of shooting dead a policewoman outside Paris on the second day of the Paris attacks.
"She entered Turkey on January 2 from Madrid. There are images of her at the airport," Mr Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by state-run news agency Anatolia.
Hayat Boumeddiene in a French police photo.
Hayat Boumeddiene in a French police photo. Photo: Getty
"Then she crossed into Syria on January 8. This is clear from the telephone records."
Turkish television channel Haber Turk later broadcast images of a woman it said was Boumeddiene crossing the Turkish border at passport control at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul.
Wearing a headscarf, she was accompanied by a bearded, unidentified man in the security footage.
Mr Cavusoglu said the 26-year-old Boumeddiene, who had married Coulibaly in an Islamic ceremony, stayed at a hotel in the Kadikoy district on the Asian side of Istanbul and was accompanied by another person.
He did not give further details on the identity of the other individual and did not make clear if she had travelled to Syria on her own.
'No warning from France'
But Turkish officials insisted that they were not at fault for allowing her to enter and then leave Turkey unapprehended after a week on its territory, saying they had not been warned in a timely fashion by France.
Mr Cavusoglu added that Turkey passed the information to the French authorities "even before they asked for it" as soon as Ankara identified her whereabouts.
"We told them: 'The person you are looking for was here, stayed here and crossed into Syria illegally'," he said.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala also said Turkey did not refuse Boumeddiene entry because French authorities had made no such request and that they hadn't warned Ankara that she was "dangerous."
He added that Turkey's intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), and the police were still working to shed more light on the matter.
Western countries have long accused Turkey of not doing enough to stem the flow of jihadists seeking to join IS fighters in neighbouring Syria.
But Ankara insists it has now stepped up border security and has repeatedly said the West also has a responsibility to share intelligence.
Speaking in Berlin, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey made an "extraordinary effort" to ensure security along its 911 kilometre (566 mile) border with Syria.
'Under surveillance'
The statements confirm that Boumeddiene was already outside France when the three-day killing spree began, contrary to earlier speculation that she had been involved in the attacks which claimed 17 lives.
The killings began on January 7 when brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi stormed the Paris offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering 12 people.
Coulibaly on January 9 took hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris which was then raided by police in the evening. The gunman and four hostages were killed. The Kouachi brothers were also killed after a separate hostage-taking incident.
A man resembling Coulibaly claimed to be a member of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in a posthumous video released online on Sunday.
Turkey's Yeni Safak newspaper reported that MIT took action following reports that Boumeddiene was in Turkey and put her under surveillance due to her "suspicious behaviour".
She stayed at the hotel in the Kadikoy for two days with a man named Mahdi Sabri and left the hotel only twice during her stay, Yeni Safak said.
The last signal received from her phone showed that she was in the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, the daily said. This would mean she would likely have crossed from around the town of Akcakale on the Turkish side of the border.
Press reports have speculated that she may have joined IS jihadists who have captured swathes of Iraq and Syria right up to the Turkish border.
However there has so far been no concrete proof of this.
An undated video grab from CCTV footage made available on January 12 is believed to be showing Hayat Boumeddiene (C) at passport control at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Her husband, Amedy Coulibaly, last week killed a policewoman and four people at a kosher market in Paris. Photo: EPA
As many as six members of a terrorist cell involved in the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen, French police said.
Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, were killed Friday by police after a murderous spree at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. The three all claimed ties to Islamic extremists in the Middle East.
Two police officials said Monday that authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Hayat Boumeddiene, Coulibaly’s widow. Turkish officials say she is now in Syria.
One of the police officials said the cell consisted of about 10 members, and that “five or six could still be at large”, but he did not provide their names. The other official said the cell was made up of about eight people and included Boumeddiene.
One of the other men believed to be part of the cell has been seen driving Boumeddiene’s car around Paris in recent days, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with the media. They cautioned that it was not clear whether the driver was an operative, involved in logistics, or had some other, less-violent role in the cell.
An Interior Ministry official declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, and a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office was not immediately available for comment.
One of the police officials also said Coulibaly apparently set off a car bomb Thursday in the town of Villejuif, but no one was injured and it did not receive significant media attention at the time.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the manhunt is urgent because “the threat is still present” from the attacks.
“The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues ... because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices,” Valls told BFM television.
The attacks began Wednesday with 12 people killed at the publication Charlie Hebdo, which had lampooned Islam and other religions, by gunmen the police identified as the Kouachi brothers. Police have said, however, that the attack was carried out by three people.
Authorities said Coulibaly killed a policewoman Thursday and then killed four people at the kosher market Friday before he was slain by police.
Video emerged Sunday of Coulibaly explaining how the attacks in Paris would unfold. French police want to find the person or persons who shot and posted the video, which was edited after Friday’s attacks.
Boumeddiene was seen travelling through Turkey with a male companion before reportedly arriving in Syria with him on January 8 — the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack and the same day Coulibaly began his murderous spree by killing the policewoman.
According to security camera video shown Monday by Turkey’s Haberturk newspaper, Boumeddiene arrived January 2 at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport. A high-ranking Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the woman on the video was Boumeddiene.
Turkish intelligence then tracked Boumeddiene from her arrival.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the state-run Anadolu Agency that she had stayed at a hotel in Istanbul with another person before crossing into Syria on Thursday. She and her travelling companion, a 23-year-old man identified as Mehdy Sabry Belhoucine, toured Istanbul before leaving January 4 for a town near the Turkish border, according to a Turkish intelligence official who was not authorized to speak by name. Little was known about Belhoucine.
Her last phone signal was January 8 from the border town of Akcakale, where she apparently crossed into Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria, the official said. Their January 9 return plane tickets to Madrid went unused.
Germany’s domestic intelligence chief urged Turkey to do more to prevent extremists crossing its territory to join the Islamic State group and other terrorist organizations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he saw hypocrisy in the West’s reaction to the Paris attacks and asked why Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi were not monitored more closely after being released from prison.
“Doesn’t the intelligence service there follow those who have been released?” Erdogan said at a news conference in Istanbul with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“The hypocrisy of the West is plain to see,” he said. “We as Muslims never sided with terrorism, we never sided with massacres. What lies behind these massacres is racism, hate speech and Islamophobia.”
Charlie Hebdo front page to feature Prophet Muhammad holding up 'Je suis Charlie' sign
Date January 13, 2015 - 6:23PM
Warning: this article contains an image of the Charlie Hebdo 'survivors edition' magazine cover, which some may find offensive.
Paris: The front page of the upcoming "survivors" edition of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo shows a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad holding up a "Je suis Charlie" sign under the words: "All is forgiven".
The front page was released to media ahead of the magazine's publication on Wednesday, its first issue since an attack on the weekly's Paris offices last week left 12 people dead, including several cartoonists. It also shows Muhammad with a tear in his eye.
Stephane Charbonnier, former publishing director of Charlie Hebdo, was among the 12 killed by two gunmen at the satirical weekly's office. Photo: AP
The special edition will have a print run of 3 million copies instead of the usual 60,000. The boosted production comes in response to soaring demand for the first edition of the satirical weekly since the deadly attacks by Islamist militants.
It will also be offered "in 16 languages" for readers around the world, one of its columnists, Patrick Pelloux, said on Monday.
Charlie Hebdo's lawyer, Richard Malka, told French radio the upcoming publication will "obviously" lampoon Mohammed - among other figures - to show staff will "cede nothing" to extremists seeking to silence them.
A French soldier outside a synagogue in Marseille, part of an unprecedented deployment of troops on home soil. Photo: AFP
The two gunmen who slaughtered 12 people in their attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices last Wednesday, including five of its top cartoonists and three other staff members, claimed as they left the scene that they had "avenged the Prophet Muhammad".
That was a reference to the fury expressed in some Muslim countries over Muhammad cartoons Charlie Hebdo had printed in the past.
The 44-year-old newspaper has always sought to break taboos with its provocative cartoons on all religions, current events and prominent personalities.
A French national flag and flowers remain hung at the statue named "Le triomphe de la Republique" in Paris. Photo: AFP
The surviving Charlie Hebdo staff have been working out of the offices of another French newspaper since Friday, with equipment loaned by other media organisations.
Their own blood-soaked offices remain sealed by police, with the entrance covered with flowers, pencils and candles in tribute to the dead.
Seventeen people, including journalists and police, were killed in three days of violence that began on January 7 when militants burst into Charlie Hebdo's office during a regular editorial meeting and shot dead five of its leading cartoonists.
The frontpage of the upcoming "survivors" edition shows a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed holding up a "Je suis Charlie" ('I am Charlie') sign under the words: "Tout est pardonne" ('All is forgiven'). Photo: AFP
Liberation newspaper, now temporarily housing Charlie Hebdo operations, revealed the front page of the January 14 edition via Twitter late on Monday - an image of the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying "JE SUIS CHARLIE" ("I am Charlie") below the headline "TOUT EST PARDONNE" ("All is forgiven").
An initial batch of 1 million copies will be available on Wednesday and Thursday, said Michel Salion, a spokesman for MPL, which distributes Charlie Hebdo. A further 2 million could then be printed depending on demand.
"We have requests for 300,000 copies throughout the world - and demand keeps rising by the hour," Mr Salion said, adding that the newspaper usually had just 4000 international clients.
"The million will go. As of Thursday, the decision will probably be taken to print extra copies ... So we'll have 1 million, plus two if necessary."
On Sunday, at least 3.7 million people took part throughout France in marches of support for Charlie Hebdo and freedom of expression. World leaders linked arms to lead more than a million citizens through Paris in an unprecedented demonstration to pay tribute to the victims.
The new edition of Charlie Hebdo, known for its satirical attacks on Islam and other religions, will include cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad and also making fun of politicians and other religions, its lawyer, Richard Malka, told France Info radio earlier.
Mr Salion said 60,000 copies of Charlie Hebdo were normally printed, with only 30,000 generally sold.
Hayat Boumeddiene caught on camera arriving at an airport in Istanbul.Photo: Reuters
This is the moment video cameras caught the partner of one of the Paris attackers arriving in Turkey, as police continue to search for possible accomplices of the gunmen who carried out last week's terrorist attacks.
The video shows Hayat Boumeddiene, now France's most wanted woman, at immigration at Istanbul airport on 2 January, six days before her partner, Amédy Coulibaly, killed a policewoman in Paris. Coulibaly went on to murder four hostages at a kosher supermarket, before being killed in a shootout with police. On Monday the French government said it was clear he had help.
In the Istanbul footage, Boumeddiene is accompanied by Mehdi Sabri Belhouchine, a 23-year-old French national whose name had not appeared in connection with the attacks, and who was not on a terrorist watchlist. After crossing Turkey, the pair are said by Turkish authorities to have gone into part of Syria controlled by Islamic State (Isis), to which Coulibaly declared his allegiance before his death.
There are some reports that Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the two gunmen who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices and killed 12 people on Wednesday, had help. Some witnesses have talked of a third person at the scene of the attack on the magazine.
French police officials said as many as six members of the terrorist cell involved in the attacks may still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to Boumeddiene. Two French police officials told Associated Press that authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Boumeddiene.
Officials believe Coulibaly may have had help from accomplices apart from Boumeddiene, with whom he lived in Paris. Someone edited and posted a video of him justifying his actions on Sunday morning, after his death in the shootout on Friday. At least one segment of the video, in which Coulibaly swears allegiance to Isis, was evidently filmed after the wave of attacks began last Wednesday as the noise of news reports can be heard in the background. That was five days after Boumeddiene left France for Turkey.
The police are also investigating two further cases that may be linked to the attacks. A 32-year-old man jogging in the southern Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses on Wednesday was shot with the Tokarev gun later found at the kosher supermarket, the French prosecutor said. Police are also investigating a car explosion - which resulted in no casualties - on Thursday in Villejuif, a town in the southern suburbs of Paris. In the video posted online, Coulibaly claimed he had bombed a car.
Turkey's foreign minister said that Boumeddiene had crossed into Syria on Thursday, the day Coulibaly shot dead Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a 27-year-old newly trained policewoman.
Turkish media claimed that when Boumeddiene and Belhoucine first entered Turkey, officers of the risk analysis centres, recently established at airports and customs in order to prevent foreign fighters entering Syria and Iraq, found the pair suspicious and started to follow them in Istanbul. They stayed at a hotel in Kadiköy, a district bordering the sea on the Asian side of Istanbul, until 3 January. Witnesses told Turkish reporters that the pair had left the hotel only twice while staying there.
Turkish secret intelligence officials said that no information had previously been shared by their French colleagues on either Boumeddiene or Belhoucine, and that they therefore abandoned the investigation of the pair who are not reported to have made contact with anyone else while staying in Istanbul.
According to Turkish police the couple's phone signal was picked up on 4 January in Sanliurfa, close to the Syrian border, from where they are thought to have travelled to Akcakale, a crossing point on a stretch of the Syrian border occupied by Isis. It is thought the two French nationals crossed into Syria from Akcakale.
The investigation also extends to Yemen, where authorities say the Kouachi brothers were given training in 2011 by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap).
Charlie Hebdo Turkish version to counter 'attack on secularism'
AFP
January 14, 2015, 6:58 am
Paris (AFP) - Charlie Hebdo's chief editor said a Turkish version of the satirical French magazine will be sold Wednesday because constitutional secularity is "under attack" in mainly Muslim Turkey.
However, it was not immediately clear exactly how it would be published and distributed.
Gerard Biard of Charlie Hebdo told AFP on Tuesday that the Turkish version was "the most important" of the five foreign versions of the weekly being published a week after 12 people were killed in a jihadist attack on its Paris offices.
The special issue features a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed on its cover holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign under the title "All Is Forgiven". Turkish media described the cover but did not reproduce it.
"Turkey is in a difficult period and secularity there is under attack," Biard said.
He added that an arrangement had been struck with Turkey's centre-left opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet for it to print the Turkish version and sell it along with copies of its own daily.
Cumhuriyet initially denied that and told AFP that such a deal was just a "rumour".
But a journalist from the Turkish newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity, said discussions were under way on printing all or part of Charlie Hebdo, but a decision had not yet been taken.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has in recent weeks come under strong pressure over freedom of the press in the country following raids in December against opposition media.
Turkey has long been accused of a lack of press freedom, and Erdogan of seeking to roll back the principle of secularity enshrined in Turkey's constitution.
Turkey, which once had large Christian minorities, is now 99 percent Muslim, and critics of Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have accused it of trying to Islamise society.
The president, a practising Muslim, has described efforts to promote birth control as "treason", told young Muslims with tattoos to beg God for forgiveness, and called for a new school curriculum to give prominence to historical Muslim scholars.
Turkey was the world's top jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013, ahead of Iran and China, according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists, before improving to 10th place in 2014.
The first issue of Charlie Hebdo since Islamist gunmen attacked it last week, killing 12 people, is to come out in six languages. The French, Turkish and Italian versions will be printed, while the English, Arabic and Spanish ones will be offered in electronic form.
Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Photo: SCMP Pictures
Yemen's al-Qaeda branch has claimed responsibility for the deadly Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, with a top commander saying it was revenge for the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
The claim came in a video posting by Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - or AQAP as the branch is known - via the group's Twitter account.
In the video, Ansi said the assault on the magazine's office, which killed 12 people - including editors, cartoonists and journalists, as well as two police officers - was in "revenge for the Prophet".
He said AQAP "chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation" against the weekly, though he produced no evidence to support the claim.
The assault was the beginning of three days of terror in France that saw 17 people killed before the perpetrators, three Islamic extremist attackers, were gunned down by security forces.
The two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack were "heroes," Ansi said.
"Congratulations to you, the Nation of Islam, for this revenge that has soothed our pain," he said. "Congratulations to you for these brave men who blew off the dust of disgrace and lit the torch of glory in the darkness of defeat."
Ansi accused France of belonging to the "party of Satan" and said the country "shared all of America's crimes" against Muslims - a reference to France's military offensive in Mali.
He also warned of more "tragedies and terror" in the future.
Washington considers AQAP as al-Qaeda's most dangerous offshoots. Formed in 2009 as a merger between the terror group's Yemeni and Saudi branches, AQAP has been blamed for a string of unsuccessful bomb plots against US targets.
These include a foiled plan to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 using a new type of explosive hidden in the bomber's underwear, and another attempt a year later to send mail bombs hidden in toner cartridges on planes bound to the US.
The Charlie Hebdo strike is the Yemen-based branch's first successful strike outside its home territory - and a triumph for its trademark double strategy of waging jihad in Yemen to build its strength to strike abroad.
At least one of the two brothers involved in the attack on the weekly travelled to Yemen in 2011 and either received training from or fought alongside the group, authorities say.
A US intelligence assessment shows Said Kouachi, 34, was trained in preparation to return home and carry out an attack.
French police say as many as six members of the terrorist cell behind the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen.
The country has deployed 10,000 troops to protect sites like Jewish schools, synagogues, mosques and travel hubs.
"This cell did not include just those three," said French police union official Christophe Crepin. "We think … they had accomplices, because of the weaponry, the logistics … These are heavy weapons. When I talk about things like a rocket launcher - it's not like buying a baguette on the corner. It's for targeted acts."
Afghan Taliban hail deadly Paris attacks, say Charlie Hedbo cartoons ‘repugnant’
Militants release statement lauding Charlie Hebdo attackers for 'bringing the perpetrators of the obscene act to justice' and denouncing magazine's new cartoons of Prophet
French commuters queue to buy the new edition of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo at Gare de Lyon train station in Paris on Wednesday. Photo: EPA
The Afghan Taliban on Thursday condemned the publication in France of further cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, and lauded last week’s deadly Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris.
An English language statement from the group said they “strongly condemn this repugnant and inhumane action and consider its perpetrators, those who allowed it and its supporters [to be] the enemies of humanity”.
It added the gunmen who killed the magazine’s staff on January 7 were “bringing the perpetrators of the obscene act to justice”.
On Wednesday, French President Francois Hollande declared Charlie Hebdo was “alive and will live on” after its new edition sold out in record time, as al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the magazine’s latest edition, the prophet was depicted with a tear in his eye, under the headline “All is forgiven”, and holding a sign reading “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie).
The Afghan Taliban, which ran a hardline Islamic government in the east Asian country from 1996-2001, said world leaders should prevent such cartoons from being released.
They said publication must be stopped to prevent “further harming world peace”, adding that to do otherwise would mean “the beliefs and sacrosanctity of over a billion people is desecrated and the world is pushed further into the fire of hatred and war”.
A few hundred people demonstrated last week in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, praising the gunmen and criticising President Ashraf Ghani’s condemnation of the attack in Paris.
Previous insults to Islam have sparked violent protests in the ultra-conservative Muslim nation.
French Muslims smart at honouring of Charlie Hebdo - teens argue cartoons feed discrimination
Date January 15, 2015 - 5:05PM
Solidarity move: Up to 4 million people marched in solidarity in France after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Photo: Getty Images
Gennevilliers: Rather than fall quiet as requested during a national minute of silence last week, three boys in Hamid Abdelaali's high school class in this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris staged an informal protest, speaking loudly through all 60 seconds.
Across France, they were not alone. In one school in Normandy, some Muslim students yelled "God is Great!" in Arabic during that same moment. In a Paris middle school, another group of young Muslims politely asked not to respect the minute, arguing to their teacher, "You reap what you sow."
Abdelaali, a 17-year-old high school senior who did observe the quiet minute, said he did so only because he was outraged by the killings in the name of his religion that were carried out at Charlie Hebdo - the satirical French newspaper attacked by Islamist extremists. But he also said he feels disgusted by a newspaper whose provocative cartoons had used the image of the prophet Muhammad for satire - and which continued to do so in its tragicomic first edition that hit news stands on Wednesday morning.
Muslim area: A street market near the Cite des Bosquets, a housing complex largely populated by Muslims in Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished suburb of Paris. Photo: New York Times
"I know some kids who agreed with the attack," he said. "I did not, but I also cannot say that I support what Charlie Hebdo is doing."
Within France's Muslim community of some 5 million - the largest in Europe - many are viewing the tragedy in starkly different terms from their non-Muslim compatriots. They feel deeply torn by the now viral slogan, "I am Charlie", arguing that no, they are not Charlie at all.
Many of France's Muslims - like Abdelaali - abhor the violence that struck the country last week. But they are also revolted by the notion that they should defend the newspaper. By putting the publication on a pedestal, they insist, the French are once again sidelining the Muslim community, feeding into a general sense of discrimination which, they argue, helped create the conditions for radicalisation in the first place.
Troop support: A French soldier patrols near a Jewish school in Paris. Photo: AFP
Unemployment and poverty remain far higher among France's Muslims than in the nation overall. Joblessness and poverty are particularly high in heavily Muslim Paris suburbs such as Gennevilliers, an area of sprawling, dense apartment blocks where at least one of the gunmen - Cherif Kouachi, 32 - lived. On the streets here, Charlie Hebdo remains something different, a symbol of what some, such as Mohamed Binakdan, 32, describe as the everyday humiliation of Muslims in France.
"You go to a nightclub and they don't let you in," said Binakdan, a transit worker in Paris. "You go to a party, they look at your beard, and say, 'Oh, when are you going to Syria to join the jihad?' Charlie Hebdo is a part of that, too. Those who are stronger than us are mocking us. We have high unemployment, high poverty. Religion is all we have left. This is sacred to us. And yes, we have a hard time laughing about it."
There were also sharp differences on Tuesday about the cover of Charlie Hebdo in its first edition since last Wednesday's attack, which leaked late on Monday. In it, Muhammad sheds a tear and holds one of the now omnipresent signs saying "Je Suis Charlie" under a headline reading "All is Forgiven".
Mourning: The funeral of murdered police officer Ahmed Merabet in Bobigny, France. Photo: Getty Images
"I wasn't shocked by this cartoon, it's not as obscene as others might have been," said Binakdan. "It was rather well done, way softer than what was published previously. At least they are not showing the prophet making love with a goat."
Others in the Muslim community were less impressed. "My first reaction was angst, this does nothing to make things better," said Nasser Lajili, 32, a Muslim city councillor and youth group leader in Gennevilliers. "I want to make clear that I completely condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. But I think freedom of speech needs to stop when it harms the dignity of someone else. The prophet for us is sacred."
Some insisted there is a double standard in freedom of speech and expression here that is bias against Islam. They cite the 2010 so-called burqa ban in France that forbade "concealment of the face" in public, and which Muslim critics say was clearly aimed at devout Islamic women. They also point to the 2008 firing of a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist - Maurice Sinet, known as Sine - after he declined to apologise for a column that some viewed as anti-Semitic. Such action was not taken, Muslim groups note, after their protests over the paper's Muhammad cartoons.
Almost 4 million people across France turned out on Sunday in support of free speech. Yet, on Monday, for instance, a 31-year-old Tunisian-born man was sentenced to 10 months' jail after verbally threatening police and saying an officer shot in last week's attack "deserved it". Also on Monday, a Paris prosecutor opened an investigation against an anti-Semitic French comedian, Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, for a post on his Facebook page calling himself "Charlie Coulibaly" - a reference to Amedy Coulibaly, the gunmen who killed four people Friday inside a Paris kosher market.
The comedian - whose comedy show, which featured an explicit skit mocking the Holocaust, was banned last year for inciting hate - suggested that he was a victim of a double standard.
"My only goal is to make people laugh, and to laugh at death, since death makes fun of us all, as Charlie very well knows," he wrote in a second Facebook post. He concluded by saying, "They consider me to be Amedy Coulibaly when I am no different from a Charlie."
French Muslim officials are decrying an unprecedented wave of anti-Islamic incidents - at least 54 since last Wednesday, including arson attacks on mosques. Yet, some argue, French troops meant to ensure safety on French streets have been disproportionately deployed, putting emphasis on protecting Jewish synagogues and schools.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls sought to calm fears in the Muslim community, saying that "to attack a mosque, a church or a place of worship, to desecrate a cemetery, is an offence to our values. Islam is the second religion of France. It all has its place in France".
Over the past few days, these societal divisions, in increasingly stark terms, have confronted the French. Virginie Artaud, a 44-year-old art teacher in the Paris suburbs, said her predominantly Muslim class of high school-aged students initially balked on Friday when she proposed that they design posters and banners to be displayed at Sunday's unity march against terrorism.
The world, her students told her, hardly takes notice when Palestinian or Syrian children are killed. Why all the attention for a humour magazine that openly mocks Islam's prophet?
"I let them all express themselves, even though they were saying the worst things they had to say," she said. "Everyone listened to each other, and at the end, they decided to make peaceful banners."
But, she said, she was unsure whether any had attended the historic march. Artaud herself had a banner: a shiny silver placard she held aloft Sunday reading "All United, All Charlie" along with blue face paint spelling out the words "Freedom is non-negotiable".
Pakistan Charlie Hebdo protests turn violent as journalist shot
AFP photographer "in serious condition" after shots fired at protests in Karachi against French satirical magazine's depiction of Prophet Mohammed
Thousands of religious party activists are expected to turn out across the country to protest against Charlie Hebdo magazine Photo: EPA/SAOOD REHMAN
By Andrew Marszal, and agencies
11:41AM GMT 16 Jan 2015
Clashes between police and protesters demonstrating against Charlie Hebdo magazine's latest "Prophet Mohammed" cover turned violent in Pakistan on Friday, as an AFP photographer was shot in the port city of Karachi.
Protests have been building in the Muslim country since the French satirical magazine revealed it would feature a depiction of the prophet on the front cover of its "survivor edition", published on Wednesday in response to the Islamist terrorist attack on its Paris headquarters.
"AFP photographer Asif Hasan suffered wounds resulting from gunshots fired by ... protesters, police have not opened fire," Abdul Khalique Shaikh, a senior police officer in southern Karachi, told Reuters.
The journalist was initially said to be in "serious condition", but appeared to be out of danger following surgery.
"The bullet struck his lung, and passed through his chest. He is out of immediate danger and he has spoken to his colleagues," Doctor Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman for Karachi's Jinnah Hospital where Hassan was taken, told AFP.
A Reuters photographer at the scene said that many protesters appeared to be armed.
Television footage showed police using tear gas and water cannons against protesters outside the French consulate in Karachi.
At least one other person has been injured.
The rallies come a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif led parliament in condemning the cartoons, regarded by many Muslims as offensive, in Charlie Hebdo, whose offices were attacked last week leaving 12 people dead.
Thousands of religious party activists are expected to turn out nationwide, including followers of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charitable wing of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group which masterminded attacks on Mumbai in 2008.
The Jamat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban meanwhile issued a statement lauding the two brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo assault, saying "they freed the earth from the existence of filthy blasphemers".
"O enemies of Islam beware! Every youth of this Ummah (Muslim community) is willing to sacrifice himself on the honour of (the) Prophet," said the statement, which was sent via email by spokesman Ehsanullan Ehsan.
Protesters in the northwest city of Peshawar and central Multan have burnt French flags on the streets.
Rallies are also being carried out in the capital Islamabad and the eastern city of Lahore.
Terrorist's body to be buried in Paris suburb, official says
Date January 18, 2015 - 4:42AM
Cherif Kouachi's body will be buried in a Paris suburb where he lived before the attack, according to officials. Photo: Getty Images
PARIS - Cherif Kouachi, one of the terrorists who killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo last week, will be buried in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris where he lived before the attack, city officials said on Saturday.
Kouachi and his brother Said were killed in a police assault on January 9 after seizing a printing plant in the northern city of Dammartin-en-Goele, following the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
According to a city official from Gennevilliers, Kouachi will be buried in the plot designated for Muslims at the cemetery there at the request of his wife, Izzana Hamyd.
"He was living here," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly about the issue.
"Even if it doesn't please us, we respect French law." The official didn't say when Kouachi would be buried.
Under French law, families who have lost a relative have between 24 hours and six days to bury their dead.
If handling of the body is not specified in a will, they are expected to make an official request for burial to the mayor of the city where the person lived or died. They can also have them buried at a family plot in a graveyard or on their ancestral land.
As police investigators continued to search for potential accomplices of the three terrorists who killed 17 people in the attacks, the fate of the bodies of the other terrorists remained unknown.
Amedy Coulibaly and Kouachi's brother Said were thought to be in a police morgue in Paris, and the Paris prosecutor, who is in charge of the counterterrorism investigation, has not made an official request to bury them.
But on Thursday, several French mayors said they would refuse to let terrorists be buried in their cities, fearing that the graves could become places of pilgrimage for other extremists or spur a violent backlash.
Arnaud Robinet, the mayor of Reims, where Kouachi had settled several years ago, said he would refuse "categorically" to bury him.
"I don't want a grave in Reims to become a place of prayer and contemplation for some fanatics," Robinet said.
Conspiracy theories all over the place in wake of Charlie Hebdo attacks in France
From colour of mirrors to mislaid identity card, rumours over Charlie Hebdo attacks abound
The colour of car's mirrors is conspiracy fodder.Photo: SCMP Pictures
Could the January 7 Charlie Hebdo attack have been a secret service operation or perhaps an anti-Muslim plot? The wildest conspiracy theories found their way onto the internet within hours of the Paris bloodbath.
Just as it did in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, the rumour machine moved into top gear from the very moment the first reports about the shootings emerged.
Among the most frequently mentioned is the apparent change in colour of the rearview mirrors of a car used by the Kouachi brothers - white on an image taken near the Charlie Hebdo office where they killed 12 people and black in a later image of the abandoned vehicle.
Experts put the change down to the fact that the mirrors were made out of highly reflective chrome, which can change colour according to the light.
Other details providing rich material for the conspiracy theorists included the identity card mislaid by one of the Kouachi brothers and the telephone receiver not properly put back on its hook at the supermarket where gunman Amedy Coulibaly killed four people during a hostage siege two days later.
Even the route of the January 11 solidarity march through Paris has been given dubious significance in the minds of some, with claims that it mirrored the outline of Israel's borders.
Emmanuel Taieb, a professor at the Sciences-Po Lyon university in central-eastern France and a specialist in conspiracy plots, said that for many the official interpretation of events - as provided by the police, politicians and analysts - was simply too dull for them. "It is considered poor, disappointing. So it is ruled out or questioned in favour of a more appealing, worrying analysis," Taieb said.
Observers say that young people, for whom the internet is their main source of information, are particularly vulnerable to believing everything they read online. Mohamed Tria, 49, a business executive and president of La Duchere football club in a tough area of Lyon, said the mainstream interpretation of the attacks was far from the norm in some places.
"I met around 40 kids aged between 13 and 15 in my club," he said. "I was astounded by what I heard.
"They had not got their information from newspapers, but from social networks, it's the only accessible source for them, and they believe what they read there as if it is the truth," he said.
Others said adults now have far less control over what young people opt to believe.
For Guillaume Brossard, who is the co-founder of the website hoaxbuster.com a site that allows people to check the validity of information, it is as if the self-expression made possible by the internet was custom-made for rebellious teenagers.
"Adolescence is a time when one needs to assert oneself and rebel against adults, the established order, society etc... Alternative theories are therefore a wonderful area of self-expression for them," he said.
Olivier Ertzscheid, a lecturer in information science in the western city of Nantes, noted that some established media such as the daily Le Monde responded fairly quickly on social networks with their counter-arguments knocking down the various conspiracy theories.
Speed was of the essence if a balanced picture was to emerge, he said.
Paris attacks: Four men charged with links to terrorist attacks by Amedy Coulibaly
The four men have been charged with offences including helping to plan terror attacks and possession of weapons
Roisin O'Connor
Wednesday 21 January 2015
Four men have been charged with links to the terrorist attacks in Paris that occurred earlier this month, the prosecutor’s office has said.
Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said that the men were handed preliminary charges overnight of association with terrorism. The men are 22, 25, 26 and 28 years old and are suspected of providing logistical support to Amedy Coulibaly, one of the terrorists killed by police. They are being held in custody until further investigation.
Three of the four had criminal records while at least one met Coulibaly in prison, M. Molins said.
He said that authorities in France are working with other countries to search for other possible suspects, and added that investigators are trying to uncover who was responsible for the posthumous video of Coulibaly, which was edited and released days after he and the Charlie Hebdo gunmen Said and Cherif Kouachi were killed by police.
In the video, Coulibaly pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group and details how the attacks were coordinated by the three men.
Police probing the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and a kosher grocery in eastern Paris arrested 12 people on the night of 15 January and in the early hours of the following day.
Under French law, they will be held in custody while an investigating magistrate builds a case. The other suspects have all been released.
Nine men and three women were questioned on suspicion of providing logistical support to the killers, the Interior Ministry announced at the time of the attacks.
France is currently still on the highest alert and has deployed over 120,000 police and soldiers across the country to protect vulnerable buildings such as schools and train stations.
Police said that the DNA of one of those arrested was found on a weapon used by Amedy Coulibaly: who killed a police officer in a Paris suburb on 8 January and then murdered four hostages at a kosher grocery store in the Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, the next day.
DNA of another man was found in the car Coulibaly drove to the grocery, Europe1 radio reported.
The three gunmen were killed in almost simultaneous assaults by the police on 9 January.
Police are still investigating the degree of coordination between the two attacks.
