Charlie Hebdo to publish Mohammad cartoon on front page: Tout est pardonné

Al Qaeda claims French attack, derides Paris rally Wed, Jan 14 14:52 PM EST image 1 of 3 By Sami Aboudi DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda in Yemen has claimed responsibility for the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the Islamist militant group's leadership for insults to the Prophet Mohammad, according to a video posted on YouTube. Gunmen killed 17 people in three days of violence that began when they shot staff in Charlie Hebdo's offices last week in revenge for the publication of satirical images of the Prophet. One Western source said no hard evidence of a direct operational link to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had yet been found. But it was the first time that a group had officially claimed responsibility for the attack, which was led by Cherif and Said Kouachi, two French-born brothers of Algerian extraction who had visited Yemen in 2011. In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said the United States believed the video was authentic but officials were still determining if the claim of responsibility is true. "As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we...claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God," Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, an AQAP ideologue, said in the recording. Ansi said the "one who chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is the leadership of the organization", without naming an individual. "ZAWAHRI'S ORDERS" He added that the strike had been carried out in "implementation" of the order of overall al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who has urged Muslims to attack the West using any means they can find. Ansi also gave credit for the operation to slain AQAP propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher cited by one of the gunmen in remarks to French media as a financier of the attack. It was not clear how Awlaki, killed by a U.S. drone in 2011, had a direct link to the Paris assault, but he inspired several militants in the United States and Britain to acts of violence. The purported claim of responsibility put a new spotlight on a group often cited by Western officials as al Qaeda's most dangerous branch. AQAP has recently focused on fighting government forces and Shi'ite rebels in Yemen, but says it still aims to carry out attacks abroad. AQAP mocked a huge rally of solidarity for the victims held in Paris on Sunday, saying the shock on display showed the feebleness of the Western leaders who attended. "Look at how they gathered, rallied and supported each other, strengthening their weakness and dressing their wounds," it said. Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State released a video that it said showed interviews with three French fighters in Syria praising the attacks, the SITE monitoring service reported. One said: "I say to the French people who think that the Islamic State will not reach Europe: With permission from Allah the Almighty, we will reach Europe – all of Europe." "JOY AT TORMENT" SITE also said Nigeria's Boko Haram group had released a video showing its leader welcoming the attacks. “We have felt joy for what befell the people of France in terms of torment, as their blood was spilled inside their country. Allah is Great!" Abubakar Shekau said in the recording, according to SITE. One Western source described Ansi as an Al Qaeda hawk reputed to have advocated a merger with the even more hardline Islamic State. Two senior Yemeni sources said Cherif and Said Kouachi had met Awlaki in Yemen and undergone weapons training in the eastern province of Marib. However, a Marib tribal leader denied that they had trained there in 2011 or that Awlaki had been based there. AQAP's Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, was once a close associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in Yemen, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia. Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi complained on Wednesday that Yemen had been subjected to a politicized media campaign over the alleged 2011 visit. "The person reported to have traveled to Yemen to learn in three days how to fire a pistol had been detained and under investigation for two years in France," Hadi said, according to the state news agency Saba. Hadi asked why such suspicious elements had been allowed to travel to Yemen and return home without being questioned. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Yara Bayoumy in Dubai, Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa and Lesley Wroughton and Doina Chiacu in Washington, Editing by William Maclean, Dominic Evans and Kevin Liffey) ==== Charlie Hebdo to publish Mohammad cartoon on front page Tue, Jan 13 15:24 PM EST By Tom Heneghan and John Irish PARIS/BOBIGNY, France (Reuters) - Charlie Hebdo will publish a front page showing a caricature of the Prophet Mohammad holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie" in its first edition since Islamist gunmen attacked the satirical newspaper. With demand surging for the edition due on Wednesday, the weekly planned to print up to 3 million copies, dwarfing its usual run of 60,000, after newsagents reported a rush of orders. Digital versions will be posted in English, Spanish and Arabic, while print editions in Italian and Turkish will also appear. France has drafted in thousands of extra police and soldiers to provide security after 17 people were killed in three days of violence that began when two Islamist gunmen burst into Charlie Hebdo's offices, opening fire in revenge for the paper's publication of satirical images of Mohammad in the past. In a parliamentary session honoring the victims, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France was "at war against terrorism, jihadism and radical Islamism" but not the Muslim faith, the country's second-largest, which "has its place in France". After his speech, lawmakers broke into a spontaneous rendition of La Marseillaise, a first in parliament's history. The front page of Charlie Hebdo's Jan. 14 edition shows a tearful Mohammad with a sign "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) below the headline: "Tout est pardonné" (All is forgiven). "I wrote 'all is forgiven' and I cried," Renald Luzier, who drew the image, told journalists at the weekly's temporary office at the headquarters of the left-wing daily Liberation. "This is our front page ... it's not the one the terrorists wanted us to draw," he said. "I'm not worried at all... I trust people's intelligence, the intelligence of humor." RIGHT TO BLASPHEME The new edition of Charlie Hebdo, known for its satirical attacks on Islam and other religions, will include other cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammad and also making fun of politicians and other religions, its lawyer said. "We will not back down, otherwise none of this has any meaning," Richard Malka told French radio. "If you hold the banner 'I am Charlie', that means you have the right to blaspheme, you have the right to criticize my religion." There was no official reaction from the French government on the new edition. At a regular news briefing,

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said: “We absolutely support the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish things like this. Again, that's what happens in a democracy. Period."

Egypt's Grand Mufti warned Charlie Hebdo against publishing a new Mohammad caricature, saying it was a racist act that would incite hatred and upset Muslims around the world. One Paris newspaper vendor said he had received 200 advance orders for Charlie Hebdo and was stopping there as he could no longer cope. French Muslim leaders urged their community to keep calm and respect the right to freedom of expression. "What is uncomfortable for us is the representation of the Prophet," Abdelbaki Attaf told Reuters at the funeral in the northern Paris suburb of Bobigny of Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman shot trying to defend the Hebdo cartoonists. "Any responsible Muslim will find it hard to accept that. But we shouldn't ban it," said Attaf, an administrator at the mosque in nearby Gennevilliers occasionally visited by Cherif Kouachi, one of the Hebdo killers. A separate funeral was held in Jerusalem for four Jewish victims of a hostage-taking in a kosher grocery shop in Paris. GUN BATTLE On Sunday, at least 3.7 million people throughout France marched in support for Charlie Hebdo and freedom of expression. World leaders linked arms to lead more than one million people through Paris in an unprecedented homage to the victims. Three days of violence ended on Friday with a siege at the Jewish grocery in Paris where four hostages and a gunman were killed. Shortly before that, police killed the Hebdo attackers in a gun battle at a print works northwest of the city. In the wake of the violence, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said 10,000 troops were being deployed at sensitive sites including synagogues, mosques and airports. President Francois Hollande's government has avoided referring to the Maghreb and African roots of the three killers. It has also sought to discredit their claim to be acting in the name of Islam, calling them "fanatics". However, France's Islamic council called on the government to step up protection of mosques, saying that at least 50 anti-Islamic acts had been reported since the attack. Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, said Muslim sites such as Paris's main mosque were not getting the same protection as Jewish synagogues or schools. "There are websites out there calling for the murder of Muslim leaders and the torching of Muslim religious sites," he told France Info. "Let's stop the double standards." European leaders fear the events in France will add to rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. On Monday, a record 25,000 anti-Islamist protesters marched through the German city of Dresden, many holding banners with anti-immigrant slogans. Le Drian said the government would need to review some of its military capabilities following the attacks and raised the prospect of reconsidering the severely strained military budget when its long-term spending plan comes up for review later this year in parliament. On Tuesday, the parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve France's continued participation in air raids against Islamic State in Iraq. One of last week's killers cited France's military strikes against Muslims as a motivation for his acts. "Islamic State is a terrorist army with fighters from everywhere," Le Drian told Europe 1 radio. "It is an international army that has to be wiped out and that is why we are part of the coalition." (Additional reporting by Mark John, Leigh Thomas and Dominique Vidalon and Emile Picy, Doina Chiacu in Washington; writing by Mark John and Tom Heneghan; editing by Giles Elgood and Philippa Fletcher) ==================================== Jihadism Born in a Paris Park and Fueled in the Prison Yard By JIM YARDLEYJAN. 11, 2015 Photo The Buttes-Chaumont park in Paris where members of the network behind last week’s terror attacks used to work out when they lived in the neighborhood. Credit Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Share This Page Email Share Tweet Save more Continue reading the main story PARIS — They jogged together or did calisthenics along the hilly lawns and tulip-dotted gardens of Buttes-Chaumont, the public park in northeastern Paris built more than a century ago under Emperor Napoleon III. Or they met in nearby apartments with a janitor turned self-proclaimed imam, a man deemed too radical by one local mosque because of his call for waging jihad in Iraq. The group of young Muslim men, some still teenagers, became known to the French authorities as the Buttes-Chaumont group after the police in 2005 broke up their pipeline for sending young French Muslims from their immigrant neighborhood to fight against American troops in Iraq. The arrests seemingly shattered the group, and some officials and experts were skeptical that members ever posed a threat to France. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Open Source: Murdoch and Fox News Mocked on Twitter for Claims About MuslimsJAN. 12, 2015 Huge Show of Solidarity in Paris Against TerrorismJAN. 11, 2015 Amedy Coulibaly, left, and Hayat Boumeddiene. French Police Say Suspect in Attack Evolved From Petty Criminal to TerroristJAN. 10, 2015 Jihadists and Supporters Take to Social Media to Praise Attack on Charlie Hebdo JAN. 10, 2015 But the shocking terror attacks last week in Paris have now made plain that the Buttes-Chaumont network produced some of Europe’s most militant jihadists, including Chérif Kouachi, one of the three terrorists whose three-day rampage left 17 people dead and who was killed by the police. Photo Boubaker al-Hakim, whose photo was shown at a news conference last year in Tunisia, had called on “all of my friends” from the neighborhood to join him in jihad. Credit Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times Other alumni from the group have died in Iraq or remained committed to radical Islam, including a French-Tunisian now aligned with the Islamic State who has claimed responsibility for a handful of assassinations in Tunisia, including the July 2013 murder of a leading left-wing politician. “They were considered the least dangerous,” Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies and specialist on French Islamic terror cells, said of the Buttes-Chaumont group. “And now you see them really at the forefront.” Now French authorities, while still piecing together how such violent attacks could have been staged in the capital, must also be concerned by the possibility that other homegrown groups may be passing unnoticed — or may be similarly underestimated. The attacks suggest the prospect of a potent intermingling among some members of the original Buttes-Chaumont group and other extremists. Their meeting place, apparently, was the French prison system. There, their radicalism hardened as some members of the group came together with other prominent jihadists who were connected to more extensive and dangerous militant networks. For decades, France has endured Islamic terror threats and attacks, from Iranian-inspired groups during the 1980s, to Algerian extremists in the 1990s, to cells linked to Al Qaeda before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. More recently, French and other European security services have grown increasingly alarmed by thousands of young, alienated Muslim citizens who have enlisted for jihad in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. In each decade, a familiar pattern has emerged: a radicalized minority of European Muslims — whether they have gone abroad for jihad or not — have been angered and inspired by wars the West has waged in the Arab world, Africa and beyond, and have sought to bring the costs of those conflicts home. After French authorities swept up members of the Buttes-Chaumont group in the 2005, during his time in prison Chérif Kouachi came under the sway of an influential French-Algerian jihadist who had plotted to bomb the United States Embassy in Paris in 2001. Continue reading the main story Graphic The Links Among the Paris Terror Suspects and Their Connections to Jihad Where their lives intersected and what may have influenced them. There, he also recruited a holdup artist named Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed four hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday. It is unclear if his older brother, Saïd Kouachi, who also took part in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office, was a member of the Buttes-Chaumont group, but the authorities have confirmed that the older brother spent time in Yemen between 2009 and 2012, getting training from a branch of Al Qaeda. Dominique Many, one of the defense lawyers involved with the Buttes-Chaumont group, said prison had only hardened Chérif Kouachi’s radicalism. “He was much more radical when he was judged in 2008 than he was in 2005, when he was arrested,” he said. “So perhaps in jail he became what he is today, the Kouachi that we knew these last days.” His path began in the 19th Arrondissement, the neighborhood around the Buttes-Chaumont park, which then was heavily populated by Muslims and immigrants. The central figure for the group was Farid Benyettou, a janitor born in 1981 to a French-Algerian family. According to a published report on French terror cells by Mr. Filiu, Mr. Benyettou got his first taste of jihadi militancy when one of his sisters married Youssef Zemmouri, who was involved in a French-Algerian terror network. Mr. Zemmouri was arrested in May 1998 as part of an alleged plot to stage a major attack at the World Cup soccer tournament. Soon, Mr. Benyettou was studying literature on Salafism, an Islamic movement, and presenting himself as a self-taught imam. He was expelled from the Pré-Saint-Gervais mosque in Paris but began hanging around the fringes of the Dawa mosque, even as he began collecting a group of young, impressionable followers, including Chérif Kouachi and his childhood friend, Thamer Bouchnak. “One day, they decided to go to a mosque where they met Farid Benyettou,” said Mr. Many, the lawyer, who represented Mr. Bouchnak in the case. “He was a young man, not much older than them, and Thamer and Chérif were impressed.” Proving their devoutness became something of a competition. “They wanted to be the best Muslim,” Mr. Many said, “better than their best friend.” Mr. Benyettou joined the protests in 2004 against the law banning Muslim girls from wearing the veil at public schools and developed a controversial preaching style, railing against the American invasion of Iraq and calling for young French Muslims to go there and fight, if not wage attacks on French soil. Why Reams of Intelligence Did Not Thwart the Paris AttacksJan. 10, 2015 Stéphane Charbonnier, Known as Charb, Relished Defying MoresJan. 08, 2015 Proud to Offend, Charlie Hebdo Carries Torch of Political ProvocationJan. 08, 2015 Video Shows a Paris Gunman Declaring His Loyalty to the Islamic StateJan. 12, 2015 “France is an unbeliever country,” he said in a 2004 interview. “I do not like this country. It does not respect the Muslims, through discrimination and Islamophobia. We have to fight in France, but through legal means. We have to turn democracy against France. But we should not fight with weapons nor throw bombs. France has not declared war on us.” Iraq was different. Already, a few young Muslim men from the 19th Arrondissement had fought in Iraq, most notably Boubaker al-Hakim, who had volunteered to defend the government of Saddam Hussein against the American invasion in 2003. There, according to Mr. Filiu’s study, Mr. Hakim made connections with Syrian and Iraqi security services, and fought. His brother, Redouane, 19, was killed during an American bombing raid in Iraq in July 2004. Two other French 19-year-olds also died fighting in Iraq, while Boubaker al-Hakim granted an interview to the French news media in which he called for his friends from the 19th Arrondissement to come join him. “All of my friends in the 19th, I tell them, come do the jihad,” Mr. Hakim told RTL, a French radio station in March 2003. “All of my brothers who are over there, come, to defend Islam. They are wimps, wimps and buffoons. The Americans aren’t anything.” He continued: “I am ready to fight on the front line. I am even ready to blow myself up. I am ready to blow myself up, to put dynamite and, ‘Boom! Boom!’ We will kill all of the Americans. We are mujahedeen. We want death. We want paradise.” Boubaker al-Hakim was detained by security services in Syria and returned to France. But in his old Parisian neighborhood, he was a hero to many young Muslim men, and Mr. Benyettou, the self-taught imam, quickly sought him out. “Benyettou recruited Boubaker because he was a softy preaching in Paris and Boubaker was the muscle,” said Mr. Filiu, the academic. Soon, Mr. Hakim was using his security connections in Syria and Iraq to arrange for young men to go fight. Some were killed. Eventually, it was time for Chérif Kouachi and Thamer Bouchnak to go fight the Americans. Photo Chérif Kouachi, one of those behind last week’s killing spree, was influenced in prison by Djamel Beghal, pictured here. Credit Gamma The two childhood friends never reached battle. French investigators used wiretaps to uncover the network and arrested everyone in January 2005, days before Chérif Kouachi and Mr. Bouchnak were supposed to ship out. The verdict and sentencing was completed three years later: Mr. Benyettou was sentenced to six years in prison, and Mr. Hakim to seven. The two recruits, Chérif Kouachi and Mr. Bouchnak, were released with time served. During the court proceedings, Mr. Benyettou testified that Chérif Kouachi had expressed his hatred for Jews and said he wanted to “burn synagogues,” “vandalize Jewish stores in Paris” and “terrorize the Jews,” according to a court document in the case. But Mr. Benyettou told the authorities that he had dissuaded his younger disciple and lectured him that the jihad was in Iraq, not France — that if he wanted to “move into action,” he needed to go to “a land of jihad.” Chérif Kouachi initially lied to investigators, according to the court document, saying that Islam appealed to him because it was “calm and moderate.” He later admitted that he planned to go to war in Iraq, but denied that he was anti-Semitic, saying his remarks were “just words” and “that he didn’t believe in what he was saying.” Lawyers in the case noted a decided difference in him by the time he was sentenced in 2008. He had spent nearly three years at Fleury-Mérogis prison, about 20 miles south of Paris, and when he appeared before the judge, he refused to stand. “He refused to stand up because the judge was a woman,” said Mr. Many, the lawyer. “And she represented French justice.” At Fleury-Mérogis, a prison then notorious for bad conditions, Chérif Kouachi received the second stage of his education in militant Islam. A report by French police intelligence, leaked to the news media, documented how Islamic extremism was spreading in the prison system, with some prisoners hanging posters of Osama bin Laden. The report estimated that 200 Muslim inmates were radical enough to “merit attention,” and 95 were categorized as “dangerous.” The report said these inmates could be “time bombs” once released. Charlie Hebdo Editors Explain New Cover Israel Remembers Jewish Paris Victims Paris Pays Respects to Slain Officers Continue reading the main story Video Before Dying, French Suspects Speak Shortly before being killed in police shootouts, Chérif Kouachi and a man believed to have killed a police officer spoke on the phone with a French television station. Video by BFMTV on Publish Date January 9, 2015. Photo by Getty Images. “The whole who’s who of French Islamists was in jail at that time,” Mr. Filiu said. Inside the prison, Chérif Kouachi came under the influence of Djamel Beghal, the French-Algerian jihadist convicted in the 2001 plot to bomb the United States Embassy, and through him met Mr. Coulibaly, the militant who attacked the kosher grocery. In June 2009, Mr. Beghal was released in central France but remained under police supervision, and the two younger men, also no longer in prison, visited and brought him food, money and clothing. By 2010, Mr. Coulibaly had been incorporated into the old Buttes-Chaumont network. He, Thamer Bouchnak and Chérif Kouachi were linked to a new plot to stage an armed prison break to free an Algerian jihadist convicted of an October 1995 bombing of a French subway station. Both Mr. Bouchnak and Mr. Coulibaly were convicted, as was Mr. Beghal, largely based on wiretaps. Chérif Kouachi was linked to the plot but never charged. Court documents uncovered an elaborate plot, using coded language, usually between Mr. Beghal and the imprisoned Algerian terrorist Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in an October 1995 bombing at a Paris subway station. In their conversations, they referred to Mr. Coulibaly as the “little black” or the “Negro.” With his criminal past, Mr. Coulibaly was in charge of obtaining weapons. Investigators found 240 cartridges of AK-47 ammunition at his home. “He had the contacts to get cheap weapons easily,” said George Sauveur, one of Mr. Coulibaly’s lawyers. “That is when his role became important to him.” Mr. Coulibaly was released from prison last year. He would later say on a video released Sunday that he had partly coordinated his rampage at the Jewish grocery with the Kouachi brothers. The two dominant figures of the Buttes-Chaumont group, Mr. Benyettou and Mr. Hakim, have taken divergent routes. After serving his prison sentence, Mr. Benyettou studied to become a nurse. This week, his internship at the Parisian hospital where he worked was cut short. Mr. Hakim, the man who had fought in Iraq, is now a member of the Islamic State and has been actively recruiting and building a network of fighters across Northern Africa and in European immigrant communities in recent years. Just as in 2003, when he exhorted his fellow Muslims from the 19th Arrondissement to join the jihad, Mr. Hakim released a video in December, claiming responsibility for the Tunisian assassinations and vowing that the Islamic State was coming to Tunisia, once a colony of France. He was a long way from Paris, but France clearly remained on his mind. “By Allah, the Islamic State is coming to Tunisia, Allah permitting,” he said. “We will tear apart that flag that was raised by the grandchildren of Charles de Gaulle, the grandchildren of Napoleon.” Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris, and Carlotta Gall from Algiers, Algeria. A version of this article appears in print on January 12, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jihadism Born in a Paris Park and Fueled in the Prison Yard. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe =========