SANAA: One of two brothers suspected of carrying out the deadly shooting at a French satirical weekly met leading Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al Awlaki during a stay in Yemen in 2011, a senior Yemeni intelligence source said yesterday.
US born and web-savvy, Awlaki was seen as an influential international recruiter to the Al Qaeda movement and a prominent figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group’s most active affiliate. He was killed in September 2011 in a drone strike widely attributed to the CIA.
US and European sources close to the investigation said on Thursday that one of the suspects in the French attack, Said Kouachi, was in Yemen for several months training with AQAP.
The Yemeni source said Kouachi, 34, was among a number of foreigners who entered the country for religious studies.
“We do not have confirmed information that he was trained by Al Qaeda but what was confirmed was that he has met with Awlaki in Shabwa,” the source said, noting that he could have been trained in one of the large parts of Yemen not under the control of the authorities back in 2011.
The southern province of Shabwa is a lawless area where Al Qaeda militants and the security forces have clashed in recent years. It was under Al Qaeda’s control in 2011 when mass protests forced long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.
AQAP emerged as one of Al Qaeda’s most aggressive international affiliates and a direct threat to the United States, when it claimed responsibility for an attempt by a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to down a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25, 2009 with a bomb concealed in his underwear.
Said and his brother Cherif, 32, are at the centre of a huge manhunt in France following the killing of 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday.
The two suspects are French-born sons of Algerian-born parents. Both men had been under police surveillance. Cherif was jailed for 18 months for trying to travel to Iraq a decade ago to fight as part of an Islamist cell.
Reuters
