Paris Attack Suspect Had Known Terrorism Connections

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Both of the suspects being sought in the manhunt were apparently known to French the French government. According to U.S. officials, 34-year-old Said Kouachi had come to the attention of French authorities as early as 2010. And in 2008, his younger brother, Cherif Kouachi, was convicted of being part of a cell in Paris that recruited jihadists to go fight in Iraq. Cherif Kouachi had been arrested several years earlier as he was about to leave France for Syria. Elaine Sciolino covered that trial for The New York Times. Earlier today, I asked her what details about him emerged at that trial.

ELAINE SCIOLINO: What emerged at the trial, Melissa, is that he wasn't anyone who popped up on the radar screen as someone who was either a strategic thinker or a jihadist planner or particularly versed in the Koran. He was one of the hangers-on, one of the followers, one of the terrorist wannabes.

BLOCK: He was convicted of being part of a network known as the 19th arrondissement cell. Talk a bit about what they were doing, who they were recruiting and what their call to arms was, basically.

SCIOLINO: What was interesting about the cell is it was the first time that French authorities had evidence of a plot to recruit young French men - either Muslims or converts - to Islam to send potential suicide bombers to Iraq. And as a result, it got a lot of attention at the time because it was a wake-up call in France that indeed, even though France had not been part of the American war against Saddam Hussein, that France could also be vulnerable to the events in Iraq.

BLOCK: What did you learn at the trial about Cherif Kouachi's background and what drew him to this cause?

SCIOLINO: I'm going to tell you the truth, Melissa, which is, at that trial he was not one of the stars. He was a minor league player. He and his brother were born in Paris. They were raised in foster homes, but they were well-integrated in French life. As a young person, he was what you would call in France a (speaking French), a little criminal, who even in that trial called himself a delinquent who smoked marijuana, who conducted small robberies. And he talked about how he was radicalized because he saw on television the tortures in prisons like Abu Ghraib and that motivated him to turn to radical Islam.

BLOCK: Cherif Kouachi was given a three-year sentence, was released on time served and then a couple years later, he was arrested again in connection with a foiled plot to spring an Algerian terrorist from prison. Those charges, I gather, were dropped. But does it point to something bigger about his connections in this jihadist world?

SCIOLINO: This is a very complicated plot. In prison he had gotten to know a terrorist named Djamel Beghal who had been convicted for a plot in 2001 before September 11th to attack the American Embassy in Paris. The attack was never carried out, but there was enough evidence against Beghal so that he was convicted. The two of them - Beghal and Kouachi - kept up the relationship and they tried to plot an escape of an even bigger terrorist. But there was not enough evidence to try the case and so Kouachi was a free man.

BLOCK: Based on Kouachi's criminal history, his record, any sense of how closely French authorities would have been keeping tabs on him?

SCIOLINO: That's a question that's only going to be answered in the next days and weeks. It's not known the extent to which French intelligence might have been following him. That said, French intelligence monitors very closely potential suspected radicals and those who might be involved in a terrorist attack. The French monitor mosques, both with human intelligence - that is, they've got people in the mosques who report on any radicalization in sermons, for example. They monitor electronically any would-be terrorists by phone and also by wiretaps. That said, because this guy was such a small-fry, he may have fallen through the cracks.

BLOCK: Elaine Sciolino reports for The New York Times from Paris. Elaine, thanks very much.

SCIOLINO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.