The Paris Terrorists And Their Al Qaeda Links

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Multiple armed attacks in the capital city. Hostages taken. Intellectuals slaughtered. "Zionist" institutions targeted. Security forces stretched - and everywhere fear.

Said Kouachi, 34, was known to have travelled to the Yemen in 2011 and to have met Anwar al Awlaki who, at the time, was the most influential al Qaeda leader in the world - and that includes Osama bin Laden.

He was also known to have got weapons training there.

Kouachi was part of a group in Paris known as the Buttes Chaumont - an alliance of violent Islamic radicals who recruited volunteers to fight the American-led operation in Iraq which later plotted to try to break an Algerian terrorist out of a French prison, and has now paralysed the French authorities with hostage-taking operations in two locations.

Awlaki was killed in an American drone strike in September 2011. One of the Kouachi brothers told the victim of one of their car-jackings that their terror campaign was revenge for the killing of Awlaki.

The American-born, Yemen-based al Qaeda leader was the franchise's propaganda chief.

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Gallery: Faces Of Paris Suspects And Victims

Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is a suspect in the murder of a Paris policewoman on Thursday. She is on the run after her husband Amedy Coulibaly was killed when armed officers brought his kosher supermarket siege to a violent end

Her husband Amedy Coulibaly, 32

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Cherif Kouachi, 32, (pictured) and Said Kouachi, 34, carried out the massacre at magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday

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The brothers took a hostage and were killed when police stormed the building where they were holed up in Dammartin-en-Goele, northwest of Paris. They are orphans who grew up in Rennes before moving to a a Paris council estate. Pictured here is Said Kouachi

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Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, 47, had received death threats in the past and was living under police protection. Charbonnier and his nine colleagues, along with the two policemen killed at Charlie Hebdo

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He produced, in English and Arabic, bomb-making guides and the Inspire magazine.

He was also closely involved in in several plots to attack Western targets, including the attempt to attack Jewish targets in the US by sending them a bomb hidden in a printer.

He was behind moves to shift al Qaeda operations away from the "centre" and to inspire followers to conduct their own terror attacks.

That appears to be what the Kouachis and their two co-conspirators did.

But there are some notable differences from the traditional al Qaeda operations such as the London and Madrid bombings, 9/11, and Mumbai.

The Paris conspirators were much more targeted in their choices of victims.

They hijacked several vehicles without killing their owners, having reportedly said they "don't kill civilians" - al Qaeda has usually been indiscriminate in its killings.

The men picked off cartoonists and other journalists by name, and then claimed that they did not murder women.

In Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, who attacked the kosher grocery in Paris, was part of the Butte Chaumont group and allegedly murdered a policewoman in the French capital on Wednesday.

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Gallery: Paris Police Officer Shot Dead In New Attack

A female traffic police officer has been shot dead in a fresh attack in Paris, a day after the killing of 12 people at the offices of satirical paper Charlie Hebdo

According to police sources a man wearing a bullet-proof vest and armed with an automatic rifle shot the officer in the back in the south of the capital

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He and his wife and alleged accomplice Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, did not appear to be wholesale in their slaughter, nor suicidal.

A close friend of the terrorist brothers, Coulibaly demanded their safe passage in return for releasing the hostages.

The brothers claimed they wanted to die as martyrs in a manner typical of al Qaeda militants.

These killers wanted to live on more in the tradition of Palestinian terrorists who hijacked aircraft in the 1970s.

That would have caused the authorities in France to pause for thought. And then to grant the terrorists their wish by launching a rescue operation before they were able to begin killing their hostages – and to end a series of atrocities tying up their resources.

The police would have worried that the series of attacks could have been the start of something even worse - direct from al Qaeda's manual for mass killing.

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Malu Rasanya