Paris Suspect in Massacre May Have Been Trained by Guantanamo Prisoner Released by Obama Admin.
Photo Credit: Fox News By Fox News. One of the two brothers suspected of gunning down 12 people in an attack on a Paris-based satirical magazine traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had direct contact with an Al Qaeda training camp, according to U.S. government sources.
Fox News is told the investigators have made it a priority to determine whether he had contact with Al Qaeda in Yemen’s leadership, including a bomb maker and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.
Both Said Kouachi, 34, who is known to have gone to Yemen, and his brother, Cherif Kouachi, who served time in France on a terrorism conviction, were on a U.S. no-fly list, sources confirmed. The new information shows both suspects, who were still being hunted Thursday night, had ties to Al Qaeda affiliates, one in Yemen and the other in Iraq.
“AQAP (Al Qaeda’s Arabian Peninsula affiliate) has been the real force within Al Qaeda that’s always been focused on external operations against the West and the United States – the most committed to doing this,” Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News. McCaul has been getting regular briefings about the Paris attack. (Read more about the suspect linked to Guantanamo prisoner released by the Obama Admin. HERE)
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French Police Swarming Paris Forest in Search for Islamic Suspects
By Fox News. French police are swarming a 51-square-mile dense forest in their hunt for the Islamist terrorist brothers suspected of carrying out Wednesday’s deadly shooting massacre at the Paris office of a satirical magazine.
Authorities say the two brothers, identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, may be hiding out in the Forêt de Retz, a vast woodland described as “larger than Paris,” Sky News reported.
The pair robbed a gas station at gunpoint Thursday near the small town of Villers-Cotterêts, about 40 miles northeast of Paris, a day after they opened fire inside the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding 11 others, four seriously, police said. (Read more from this story HERE)
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