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Manhunt for Charlie Hebdo Attack Suspects Continues Charlie Hebdo Suspects Target of Manhunt as France Mourns Its Dead
(about 2 hours later)
PARIS — The French authorities carried out an intense manhunt on Thursday for the two brothers who are suspected of mounting the deadly terrorist attack on the Paris office of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left a dozen dead. Officials detained and questioned seven people overnight in connection with the assault. PARIS — As France mourned its dead, thousands of police officers were mobilized on Thursday in a giant manhunt for two brothers suspected of killing 12 people, including two police officers, at a satirical magazine.
Xavier Castaing, a spokesman for the Paris police, said that two men who resembled the suspects had been spotted in the Aisne region northeast of Paris. News reports said that the two men who were seen there had robbed a gas station, and that police forces were swarming the area, searching for the car they were using. The police, who were also guarding sites like railway and subway stations, department stores and journalism offices, were said to be narrowing their search for the brothers to northern France, where the armed men broke into a gasoline station to get food. They later abandoned one of the cars they had used in their getaway from Paris on Wednesday.
Even as France observed a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of the Wednesday attack, there were unnerving reports on Thursday of the killing of a police officer and a street sweeper in a southern Paris suburb, and accounts of attacks on mosques in other parts of France. The sighting of the men at the station and the discovery of the car, in the town of Villers-Cotterêts, in Picardy, captivated a nation that seemed to come together, at least for a moment of silence at noon on a rare official day of national mourning, to defend French values like freedom of the press and religious tolerance. Thousands wore stickers reading “Je suis Charlie” — “I am Charlie” — referring to the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, whose editors and most prominent cartoonists were killed.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France said in an interview on RTL radio that the authorities’ main concern was preventing another terrorist attack. He issued a plea for witnesses to contact the police with any relevant information. French national television ran live coverage of the hunt for the brothers, Said and Chérif Kouachi, 34 and 32.
The two chief suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack were identified as Said Kouachi, 34, and his younger brother Chérif, 32. The authorities searched for them on Thursday across a wide area of northern France. A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, about 145 miles northeast of Paris. The gunmen killed their victims and wounded 11 more people with precision and calm, and were heard on videos shouting “Allahu Akhbar” and “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!”
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, confirmed that seven people were detained overnight in connection with the case, but he offered no details on their ties, if any, to the Kouachi brothers. The men said that they were acting on behalf of Al Qaeda in Yemen, and on Thursday, two American officials said that the brothers had ties to Al Qaeda’s affiliate in that country. The officials declined to say whether that meant the suspects had been in communication with the group or had actually traveled there and perhaps received training.
Two American officials said on Thursday that the Kouachi brothers had ties to Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, but the officials declined to say whether that meant the suspects had been in communication with the group or had traveled there and perhaps received training. The officials cited the ongoing investigation. Questions were raised about why the police and security services, who had known about the brothers, one of whom had spent time in jail for jihadist activities, had not managed to disrupt the attack plot.
A recent issue of Inspire — the propaganda magazine published by the affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — named Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, on a suggested hit list of Westerners who it said had insulted the Muslim faith. His name was in a two-page spread under the heading, “A Bullet a Day Keeps the Infidel Away — Defend the Prophet Mohammed.” Mr. Charbonnier was killed in the attack. The moment of silence here was widely respected. But some worried that the sense of national solidarity might not last, given the shock the assault on the paper has delivered. Arash Derambarsh, a publisher and politician, compared it to the Sept. 11 attacks. In the United States, Al Qaeda struck symbols of American economic and political power; here, the target – a small, often vulgar satirical magazine — was an important cultural symbol of French secularism, liberty and license.
People across France stood in silence at noon in their offices and in public places on Thursday to remember the victims of the attack, one of the worst in France since World War II. “This is a war between freedom of speech and our civilization and those who want to kill it,” Mr. Derambarsh said.
In a national day of mourning, bells tolled. Children at schools stopped classes. Corporate boardrooms cut short meetings. The Paris Métro came to a halt. At mosques, people bowed their heads. Even some electronic road signs displayed the words “I am Charlie,” the unofficial slogan of supporters of the newspaper and its fallen staff members. Charlie Hebdo itself announced that despite the loss of so many of its most talented people – cartoonists who have been famous in France for a generation — it would publish as scheduled next Wednesday, and that it would print one million copies instead of the usual 60,000.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced that the lights of the Eiffel Tower would be shut off at 8 p.m. Thursday in tribute. But the mood of defiance in France was a little fragile. On Thursday morning, there was panic after another gunfight, this one involving a police officer who was killed and a city employee who was wounded near a subway station just south of the capital. The government announced Thursday night that it had made two arrests.
On trains and station platforms, in malls, offices and public parks, citizens across France were hunched over newspapers on Thursday with headlines detailing the killings. Most defiantly went on with their lives, even as patrols by armed soldiers hinted that things were not as usual. The incident seems unrelated, police said, but there were other isolated events. There was an explosion at a kebab shop in eastern France, with no casualties reported, and two mosques were fired at, prosecutors said.
At Notre Dame Cathedral, pedestrians wept as dozens stood silent on a gray and rainy day to pay tribute to the victims of the attack. There was a palpable sense of determination that France and its vaunted republican values of free speech and freedom of the press would not be bowed by extremism. In a sign of how the attack was already spilling over into French political debates, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, on Thursday called for a national referendum on whether to reinstitute the death penalty. “The Islamists have declared war against France,” she told France 2.
The shooting of a police officer and a street sweeper on Thursday rattled a city already on edge, though there was no immediate indication that the shooting had anything to do with the Charlie Hebdo assault. News reports said the officer had been called to the scene of a traffic accident, where she came under fire from a man said to have been wearing a bulletproof vest; she later died of her wounds, BFM TV reported. So far, Ms. Le Pen said, she has not been invited to a “unity rally” scheduled for Sunday to which other political leaders have been invited. “Things are clear from now on, the masks fall off,” she told the newspaper Le Monde. “National unity is a pathetic political maneuver.”
Separately, Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday that there had been an explosion near a kebab shop Thursday morning in the eastern town of Villefranche-sur-Saône, not far from a mosque. Citing unnamed officials, the news organization said that no one was hurt and that there were no known links to the attack at Charlie Hebdo. A loud debate on immigration, already an emotional issue in France and across Europe at a time of economic malaise, was expected to become even more central after an attacks that to many underlines the clash between Western values and religious extremism.
Mr. Valls said the priority for the Charlie Hedbo investigators was to find the gunmen, who he said were heavily armed, and to prevent them from continuing to spread terror. The French government moved quickly to try to capture the gunmen and reassure the nation. They announced numerous lower-level arrests and said that at least five planned terrorist attacks had been thwarted in the last 18 months.
The Kouachi brothers were known to the French authorities and had been tracked, he said. “We are facing an unprecedented terrorist threat, both internally and externally,” Mr. Valls said. Despite all the country’s counterterrorism efforts, he said, “there was not zero risk.” The alert level was raised to its highest level in northern France, as well as in the capital. The police appeared to have gotten a break when one of the brothers, Said, left his identity card in the first car used by the gunmen, reports said. It was abandoned Wednesday evening after a crash and contained arms and rocket launchers.
France’s grief also resonated across the world. One photograph on Instagram showed the arm of what appeared to be newborn baby with a wristband saying “I am Charlie.” At newsrooms across Europe, including in Paris and London, journalists halted their reporting to commemorate their fallen colleagues. Members of Parliament in London gathered and held pens to display solidarity with the victims They seemed to get another break when the men robbed the gasoline station, wearing masks and waving Kalashnikovs, according to the station’s manager. Xavier Castaing, a spokesman for the Paris police, said that two men fitting the description of the suspects had been spotted in Villers-Cotterêts, reportedly driving a gray Renault Clio, the same type of car the suspects hijacked on Wednesday.
One cartoonist, who uses the name Matt, paid tribute to those who died by drawing a cartoon published in The Daily Telegraph of two masked gunmen looking at each other. “Be careful, they might have pens,” the caption reads. There was considerable interest in Chérif Kouachi, who was arrested in 2008, accused of being part of a terrorist cell recruiting French jihadists to fight in Iraq. He served 18 months in prison and is said to have been further radicalized there.
Both brothers were on the radar of the police and security services, but clearly the authorities had not picked up this well-planned attack, just as they failed in 2012 to stop Mohammed Merah from killing seven people in southwestern France, on behalf of Al Qaeda, he said, even though they had followed him after his own stints in prison.
There simply are not enough police and security officials to keep full monitoring on everyone who goes through prison, said Jean-Charles Brisard, head of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, who had spoken to French security officials. The authorities had Chérif under surveillance “for a period of time, but then they judged that there was no threat, or the threat was lower, and they had other priorities,” he said.
Given the 1,000 to 2,000 French citizens who have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight, perhaps 200 of whom have returned, “it’s a problem of resources,” Mr. Brisard said.
“To follow a person 24 hours a day you need at least 20 people,” he said. “And you cannot impose surveillance on everyone. Even legally it’s impossible.”
A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, 18, turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mézières, about 145 miles northeast of Paris.
At noon, on this national day of mourning for the worst terrorist attack in France since the Algerian war, bells rang; children at schools stopped classes; corporate boardrooms cut short meetings. At mosques, people bowed their heads. Some electronic road signs displayed the words, “Je suis Charlie.”
At Notre Dame Cathedral, pedestrians wept as dozens stood silent on a gray and rainy day to pay tribute to the victims. Dozens lay flowers in front of Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters. Through the vigils and tributes, some held up pencils, a symbol of support for press freedom. There was a palpable sense of determination that France and its vaunted Republican values of free speech and freedom of the expression would not be bowed by religious extremism.
The night before, perhaps 100,000 people or more gathered all over France to show their defiance and lament the blow to their sense of their country.
Many Muslim clerics and spokesmen added their voices, too, to the sense of outrage, denouncing the killings and saying that they had nothing to do with legitimate Islam.
Abdennour Bidar, a French Muslim and professor of philosophy, said on Arte that the killers “do not deserve the name of Muslims.” In the name of Islam, he said, he would not allow Islam to be “instrumentalized, stolen by these people who say that they are avenging the Prophet. It’s a disgrace, an infamy, a lie.”
The assault against Charlie Hebdo has threatened to fan resentment and suspicion of France’s Muslim population, the largest in Europe. The authorities said that at least two Muslim locations had been targeted overnight, and that three blank grenades had been lobbed at a mosque in Le Mans, a city west of Paris early Thursday. News reports said that a Muslim prayer hall in the Port-la-Nouvelle area in southern France had also been shot at.
They said no one had been injured.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for citizens not to submit to hatred. Charlie Hebdo must continue its “right to make fun of everyone,” he said. “There are no borders constraining the freedom of expression and thought.”
At a Mass in Rome, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the attack. “We pray, in this Mass, for the victims of this cruelty — so many of them — and we pray also for the perpetrators of such cruelty, that the Lord might change their heart,” he said.
One cartoonist called Matt at London’s Daily Telegraph paid tribute to those killed by drawing a cartoon of two masked gunmen outside Charlie Hebdo’s offices conferring with each other. “Be careful, they might have pens,” reads the caption.