There is a early report that identifies two suspects, apparently brothers aged 32 and 34, and a third suspect 18, that may be the subject of a raid today in Reims. French Anti-Terror Police (Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate; SDAT) have concluded the raid with no arrests. There have been multiple raids being conducted in Pantin, northern Paris, Strasbourg, and Gennevilliers, as well. The suspect 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad has just turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières in the Ardennes, near the Belgian border, claiming to have an alibi for the time of the attack. One of the older suspects left his ID card in one of the vehicles.
Several large French media companies united to send a letter of support to Charlie Hebdo's staff, offering to help them continue publishing and stressing the importance of "preserving the principles of independence and liberty of thought and expression."
The Times of London has an
interactive timeline for the events so far
update: images of two suspects still at large
PARIS (AP) -- Masked gunmen stormed the offices of a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, methodically killing 12 people Wednesday, including the editor, before escaping in a car. It was France's deadliest terrorist attack in half a century.....
Witness Cedric Le Bechec, 33, described seeing the carjacking on his Facebook page. He said he saw "two big .... guys get out of a bullet-ridden car with a rocket launcher in hand, eject an old guy from his car and calmly say hi to the public, saying `you can tell the media that it's al-Qaida in Yemen.'"
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 (32) and Cherif Kouachi, (34) 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.
At the nearby offices of the leftist newspaper Liberation, the entrance was being guarded by police wielding assault rifles. Inside, staff members were mourning for lost friends but were also defiant.
“We need to be like Charlie. We need to be strong. We need to be irreverent. We need to be impactful,” said Johan Hufnagel, the paper’s deputy editor. “If we change because of these guys, it will mean they will have won.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The cartoonist Honoré has been identified as the fifth caricaturist to be fatally wounded in Wednesday’s attack while he attended an editorial meeting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine.
Honoré, whose full name was Philippe Honoré, was the artist who drew the last cartoon tweeted by the weekly only moments before the massacre. The cartoon shows the leader of the Islamic State and the Levant (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, presenting his New Year message saying “and especially good health!
http://www.theguardian.com/...