FRANCE: Three Paris Terrorists Identified

Via the New York Times:

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible. The assault threatened to deepen the distrust of France’s large Muslim population, coming at a time when Islamic radicalism has become a central concern of security officials across Europe. Officials and witnesses said at least two gunmen carried out the attack with automatic weapons and an unusual degree of military-style precision. President François Hollande of France called it a display of extraordinary “barbarism” that was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism. He declared Thursday a national day of mourning.

Via the Jerusalem Post:

Police issued a document to forces across the region saying the three men were being sought for murder in relation to the Charlie Hebdo attack. The document, reviewed by a Reuters correspondent, named them as Said Kouachi, born in 1980, Cherif Kouachi, born in 1982, and Hamyd Mourad, born in 1996. The police source said one of them had been identified by his identity card which had been left in the getaway car. The Kouachi brothers were from the Paris region while Mourad was from the area of the northeastern city of Reims, the government source told Reuters. Anti-terrorism police were preparing an operation in Reims, the police source said, declining to give more details. The police source said one of the brothers had previously been tried on terrorism charges. Cherif Kouachi was charged with criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005 after he had been arrested before leaving for Iraq to join Islamist militants. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008, according to French media.

Via the Associated Press:

A tweeter from al-Qaida's Yemeni branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, who communicated Wednesday with The Associated Press, said the group is not claiming responsibility, but said it might have inspired the attack. In 2013, al-Qaida magazine Inspire specifically threatened Charb and included an article titled "France the Imbecile Invader." Two police officials named the three suspects as Frenchmen Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who are brothers and in their early 30s, as well as 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive and ongoing investigation. Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency, and sentenced to 18 months in prison. During his 2008 trial, he told the court he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib.