Ten years after his arrest, at the end of January 2005, on the eve of a departure for jihad in Iraq with “the Buttes-Chaumont network”, Chérif Kouachi, 32 years old, reappeared, harnessed to his older brother Saïd, 34 years old, Kalashnikov in hand, in balaclava and black uniform, in the process of waging holy war in Paris. Launching at the end of the massacre committed Wednesday: “We avenged the prophet Mohammed! We killed Charlie Hebdo!” They escaped the surveillance of the anti-terrorist services, which consider them to be the armed wing of Al-Qaeda. In their black Citroën C3 abandoned on Rue de Meaux, in their favorite neighborhood in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, investigators discovered Saïd Kouachi’s identity card, which betrayed their identity, as well as a Kalashnikov magazine, a dozen Molotov cocktails and a jihadist flag. Deduction from a source close to the investigation: “This demonstrates their Islamist radicalization and suggests that they were planning further terrorist actions.”
“To show that he was a hero”
Orphaned in childhood by his two parents who immigrated from Algeria, Chérif Kouachi, born in 1982 in Paris and raised in a home in Rennes, obtained a sports instructor’s certificate before moving to Paris. He has never left France. Taking in a converted Frenchman in 2004, with his older brother Saïd, on Avenue Ambroise-Rendu near Porte de Pantin in the 19th arrondissement, this pizza delivery man has “more the profile of a city dope smoker than a Takfir Islamist,” according to Me Vincent Ollivier who defended him in 2005.He smokes, drinks, doesn’t wear a beard and has a girlfriend before marriage.” He stopped drinking alcohol the previous Ramadan and then defined himself as “an occasional Muslim”. He frequents the Adda’Wa mosque on Rue de Tanger, in the 19th arrondissement, where he meets a small Salafist preacher, Farid Benyettou, born on May 10, 1981, the day François Mitterrand was elected to the Elysée. Benyettou knows the Koran like the back of his hand, organizes “preachings” home in the evening and recruits Islamist fighters for the group of the bloodthirsty Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who has joined Al-Qaeda. “Shocked” him too “by the American intervention in Iraq and by the exactions of the marines at Abu Ghraib”, Chérif Kouachi becomes an emulator or “a student” by Farid Benyettou, and falls into radical Islam. “The group effect led him to want to show that he was a hero without measuring the consequences. He knows that most of the French who went to Iraq were killed.”excuse me then Mr Ollivier (lire Release of February 21, 2005). Between July and October 2004, three of them, all from the neighborhood, lost their lives there. Ten others from Buttes-Chaumont are leaving or have already left.
An amateur film shot in 2004 by an association in the 19th arrondissement and broadcast in Evidence in 2005 on France 3 shows Chérif Kouachi in “rap fan, more ready to enjoy life and pretty girls than go to the mosque”, explains the journalist. In the report, Chérif Kouachi explains the lessons that Benyettou taught him: “Farid told me that the texts give evidence of the benefits of suicide attacks. It is written in the texts that it is good to die as a martyr.” He confides his “fear” more, “Thanks to Farid’s advice, [ses] doubts faded away.” Swe also have free will: “It is obvious that Farid influenced my departure in the sense that he gave a justification for the impending death.” In Evidence, A social worker who was following Kouachi in detention said that he was aware of having been “roll in flour” by his mentor and “got involved in something he didn’t understand, without realizing it.”
“Jihad is solitary”
Convinced by Benyettou, Chérif Kouachi then prepared for war with his teammate Thamer Bouchnak, a Tunisian from the neighborhood, 22 years old, who returned from the Abou Nour Koranic institute in Damascus in Syria, where his passage was a fiasco according to an investigator at the time: “He doesn’t speak Arabic and finds himself marginalized. For him, the young man from the French suburbs, it’s a culture shock.” Back in the 19th century, a courier and then delivery man for a Chinese caterer, Thamer Bouchnak saved 8,000 euros to pay for his return ticket between Paris and Damascus as well as that of his friend Chérif Kouachi, whom he met at prayers at Farid Benyettou’s. Benyettou ordered them to keep the secret because “Jihad is solitary.”
On the training side, the two future mujahideen in Iraq run in the Buttes-Chaumont park and do “jogging in a stadium in the rain.” On the military side, Bouchnak quickly meets a stranger at the exit of a 19th century metro station who, according to an investigator, “explains from a sketch board how a machine gun or a Kalashnikov works and mimes how to hold the weapon, load it and operate it.” Thamer Bouchnak is supposed to transmit this rudimentary teaching to Chérif Kouachi.
The plane for the jihad is scheduled to take off on January 25, 2005 at 6:45 a.m., heading for Iraq via Damascus, after a prayer vigil at Benyettou’s. Once in Syria, “A 14-year-old boy is supposed to wait for them at the airport, take them to buy a Kalashnikov for 200 euros, then introduce them to smugglers who will take them to Iraq.” But the closer the departure date gets, “the more Chérif Kouachi is scared”, says Mr Ollivier at the time. The DST having been on the alert for more than six months, Benyettou, Bouchnak and Kouachi were intercepted just before their trip. All three were arrested for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise”, accused by the public prosecutor of belonging to a “network whose purpose is to send young people of French nationality to fight in Iraq” and having “fomented plans for attacks on national territory against French and foreign interests.”
On the relevance of an action on French soil, the Buttes-Chaumont gang was divided. According to one of its members, Kouachi is very aggressive and virulent: “Chérif spoke to me about breaking up Jewish shops, about catching them in the street and beating them. He only talked about that and about doing something here in France before leaving.” Against two restaurants run by members of the Jewish community on Rue Petit, near Porte Chaumont, a stone’s throw from his home. However, for his lawyer who is minimizing the charges, the fragile Kouachi, anxious not to be seen as a coward, would have simply mentioned a hypothetical revenge against a Jewish business which had “fired”. Mr. Ollivier then retouches the build of the Bouchnak-Kouachi tandem: “The public prosecutor is trying to link them to Bin Laden and Al-Zarqawi. But they are only two 22-year-olds who bought a ticket to Syria, with a return. Moreover, Chérif Kouachi never stops thanking the justice system for putting him in prison. Since then, a lump has disappeared from his stomach.”
Bodybuilding and gymnastics in prison
Questioned by the DST, Chérif Kouachi assumes his e blind commitment, indoctrinated by the “emir”: “I was ready to die fighting. I had this idea when I saw the injustices shown on television regarding what is happening there. I mean the torture that the Americans inflicted on the Iraqis.” The temptation of jihad almost turned him into cannon fodder. According to him, the pizza delivery man did not really want to die at 22. Indicted on January 29, 2005 for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise”, Chérif Kouachi is imprisoned. It is within the walls of Fleury-Mérogis, then Fresnes that this not very thick boy practices sports in high doses, bodybuilding and gymnastics, a real workout. On March 1, 2008, he marries a childcare worker who works in a nursery, wears the full veil and has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His brother Saïd is his only witness. Then, the same month, Chérif Kouachi appears free, with six other coreligionists from Buttes-Chaumont, before the Paris criminal court. According to the hearing report of the Agence France-Presse, the prosecutor Xavier-Rolai mocks Thamer Bouchak and Chérif Kouachi who, in his eyes, “would surely do it again tomorrow if they could.” He demanded three years of imprisonment against the duo. Chérif Kouachi was finally sentenced to this sentence but reduced by eighteen months suspended. He therefore does not return to detention.
The link with Al-Qaeda
At his side, a dangerous jihadist from the neighborhood, Boubakeur el-Hakim, is sentenced to seven years in prison. His brother Redouane el-Hakim was killed in the fighting in Fallujah north of Baghdad. Already seasoned and unharmed, Boubakeur was arrested by the Syrian police upon his return from Iraq (where he acquired solid military and terrorist skills), from where he was expelled and sent back to France.
Born in 1983 in Paris, Boubakeur el-Hakim also grew up in the 19th arrondissement, began studying accounting, quickly abandoned, before retraining as a market vendor. Then, at the age of 20, he joined the ranks of the anti-American jihad in Iraq. Filmed at the time in a training camp, this burly man with a long beard announces that he “wants to kill everyone who wants to kill Islam” and urged his Parisian comrades from the 19th arrondissement to join him. Deported to France after serving his sentence, the fanatic reappeared in Tunisia and, in December 2013, assassinated two opponents of the Islamists: Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi. Now 31, Boubakeur el-Hakim is the most wanted man in Tunisia.
In the eyes of radical Islam specialist Jean-Pierre Filliu, questioned by AFP, “Boubakeur el-Hakim represents the link between the Kouachi brothers” and an Islamist terrorist group. He assumes that “El-Hakim and, without doubt, Chérif Kouachi joined the Iraqi Al-Qaeda networks upon their release from prison.” In 2010, Chérif Kouachi returned to France, suspected of having helped set up the escape plan from a French prison of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, the bomb maker of the 1995 Islamist attacks in Paris.
«A family clan»
In the shadow of his younger brother, Saïd has lived since 2013 in Reims in the Croix-Rouge district with his veiled wife and young child. “Discreet and kind”, according to his neighbors (read Libération.fr), he has never been convicted or imprisoned. For a police officer, “It’s a family clan,” welded by blood ties. But the “leader” in action, it is Chérif. Did the younger one train the elder abroad to jihad lands? According to our information, the French intelligence services have not found any trace of the Kouachi brothers in Syria. But other sources mention possible military training of Chérif and Saïd Kouachi in Yemen. In any case, for the intelligence officers, the attack by the two brothers was “sponsored” not by the Islamic State, but “100% by Al-Qaeda”.
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