French police hunt two 'armed and dangerous' brothers

PARIS - Two 'armed and dangerous' brothers with links to terrorist groups going back at least a decade remained on the run in Thursday following the Charlie Hebdo magazine killings.

As the manhunt for Cherif and Said Kouachi continued, their alleged getaway driver Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself in to police in Charleville-Mezieres in northern France.

All three French-Algerian Muslims escaped on Wednesday following the bloodbath at the offices of the notoriously anti-Islamic satirical magazine in Paris.

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that four people were arrested in Reims in connection with the murders.
They are thought to be relatives and friends of the Kouachi brothers, who were known to have stayed in the eastern town.
Their name was on the letterbox of a Rheims apartment raided by special operations police overnight.
A police source described the arrests as 'routine', adding: 'Anybody who had any links with the suspects is being spoken to.'

France is holding a day of mourning for the 12 people killed by automatic gunfire during the country’s worst terrorist atrocity this century.

A minute's silence will be observed at midday across the country and the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral in the capital will toll.

Questions will also be asked as to why – once again – young Frenchmen with close links to terrorism were apparently given free rein to carry out their crimes.

The fact that two were still at large almost 24 hours after a gun battle in which two policemen died alongside nine others, mainly magazine staff, was also a cause for huge concern.  

Detectives identified the suspects after one left his identification papers in the abandoned Citroen car used to escape after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

A French police source said the Kouachis were 'armed and dangerous' and that a 'nationwide hunt was underway to find them.'

He added that Mourad, a student, was encouraged to hand himself in by relatives after his name appeared on social media as a suspect for the killings. He is under armed guard and being questioned by police.

Operations by RAID, the police tactical unit, on an address in Reims, eastern France, overnight came to nothing, he added.

Both Said Kouachi, 34, and his brother, Cherif Kouachi, 33, were first arrested in 2005 as suspected members of the Buttes Chaumont – a group operating out of the 19^th arrondissement of Paris and sending 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.

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.

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 19^th arrondissement and were radicalised by Farid Benyettou, a janitor-turned-preacher who gave sermons calling for militancy 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.

Nemmouche had also been able to travel to and from France to Syria, where he is known to have fought with Islamic State (IS) militants.

France remains on the highest terror alert and extra troops have been deployed to guard media offices, places of worship, transport hubs and other sensitive areas.

Vigils have also been held in Paris and in cities across the world in tribute to those killed in Wednesday's attack.

Many carried placards reading "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) in solidarity with the victims.

Eight journalists - including the magazine's editor - died along the two policemen, a maintenance worker and another visitor when the masked terrorists stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices in the 11^th arrondissement of Paris.

The magazine angered Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, and its offices were fire bombed in 2011.

Editor Stephane Charbonnier, 47 and more commonly known by his pen name of Charb, had received death threats in the past and was living under police protection. He was murdered alongside fellow cartoonists Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski.

Following the raid, the gunmen were heard shouting ‘we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad’ and ‘God is Great" in Arabic (‘Allahu Akbar’).

In sombre TV address on Wednesday night, French President Francois Hollande said: ‘Today the French Republic as a whole is the target.’

Thursday's national day of mourning is only the fifth held in France in the past five decades.