PUBLIC
BY PETE WILLIAMS, M. ALEX JOHNSON AND JON SCHUPPE
One of the suspects in the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine has been killed and the two others are in custody, two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News.
Authorities identified the three men as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, both French and in their early 30s, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality wasn't immediately clear.
One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, told The Associated Press that the men were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. And Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Twelve people were killed in the attack by gunmen, armed with AK-47s, who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has enraged Muslims for publishing cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. On their way in, they killed a maintenance worker, then stormed into an editorial meeting, where they killed eight journalists, including Stephane Charbonnier, the magazine's editorial director, and Bank of France economist Bernard Maris, a columnist. A security officer and a guest were also gunned down. As they fled, they killed a second police officer.
Eleven other people were injured, four of them critically, officials said.
Because the masked, black-clad gunmen attacked with militaristic precision and left the scene with shouts of "Allahu Akbar," the killers were suspected to be well-trained Islamic extremists.
Little information was immediately available about Mourad and Said Kouachi, but Cherif Kouachi has been suspected of involvement in terrorist groups for at least a decade. In January 2005, he and another French national were arrested in Paris as they were planning to fly to Iraq via Syria. Kouachi was described at the time as one of two deputies to the leader of an operation to send young volunteers to Iraq to fight U.S.-led forces.
Authorities linked the operation to the 19th Arrondissement Network, named for the Paris district where it was based, which is home to many Muslim families with roots in France's former North African colonies. Kouachi was sentenced to three years in prison, 18 months of which were suspended.
The Associated Press quoted Cherif Kouachi in 2008 as saying he'd been motivated by outrage at images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib. "I really believed in the idea," it quoted him as saying.
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