- Sep 12, 2009
- 6,840
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By Jeremy Scahill
In the days since the siege at the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, the press and social media sites have
been consumed with the possible answers to one question: Beyond the two shooters, Said and Cherif
Kouachi, who is responsible for the attack that killed 12 people at the magazine’s offices?
On Friday, shortly after the gunmen were killed by French forces in a raid on a printing plant outside
of Paris, a source from within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) provided The Intercept
with a series of messages and statements taking responsibility for the attacks, asserting that AQAP’s
leadership “directed” the raid on the magazine to avenge the honor of the Prophet Mohammed.
Moments after The Intercept published these statements, an AQAP official, Bakhsaruf al-Danqaluh
tweeted, in Arabic, the exact paragraphs the AQAP source provided us. Within an hour of that,
AQAP’s senior cleric, Sheikh Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari, released an audio statement through
AQAP’s official media wing, praising the attack. “Some of the sons of France showed a lack of manners
with Allah’s messengers, so a band of Allah’s believing army rose against them, and they taught them
the proper manners, and the limits of freedom of speech,” Nadhari declared. “How can we not fight
the ones that attacked the Prophet and attacked the religion and fought the believers?” While heaping
passionate praise on the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Nadhari stopped short of making any claim that
AQAP directed or was in any way involved with the planning.
Read more:https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/12/the-paris-mystery/
In the days since the siege at the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, the press and social media sites have
been consumed with the possible answers to one question: Beyond the two shooters, Said and Cherif
Kouachi, who is responsible for the attack that killed 12 people at the magazine’s offices?
On Friday, shortly after the gunmen were killed by French forces in a raid on a printing plant outside
of Paris, a source from within al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) provided The Intercept
with a series of messages and statements taking responsibility for the attacks, asserting that AQAP’s
leadership “directed” the raid on the magazine to avenge the honor of the Prophet Mohammed.
Moments after The Intercept published these statements, an AQAP official, Bakhsaruf al-Danqaluh
tweeted, in Arabic, the exact paragraphs the AQAP source provided us. Within an hour of that,
AQAP’s senior cleric, Sheikh Harith bin Ghazi al-Nadhari, released an audio statement through
AQAP’s official media wing, praising the attack. “Some of the sons of France showed a lack of manners
with Allah’s messengers, so a band of Allah’s believing army rose against them, and they taught them
the proper manners, and the limits of freedom of speech,” Nadhari declared. “How can we not fight
the ones that attacked the Prophet and attacked the religion and fought the believers?” While heaping
passionate praise on the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Nadhari stopped short of making any claim that
AQAP directed or was in any way involved with the planning.
Read more:https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/12/the-paris-mystery/