NBC Walks Back Report of Dead Suspect, Police Release Photos of At-Large Suspects
Slate will post running news updates about the situation in Paris below. For other Slate coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, click here.
Jan. 7, 2015, 9:15 p.m.: NBC is also now reporting that the youngest of the three suspects in Wednesday's Paris terrorist attack has turned himself in to authorities, and the network has fully walked back its earlier report that a suspect had been killed.
Williams’ counter-terrorism sources told him that “the information that was the basis of that report cannot be confirmed.”
French police, meanwhile, have released photos of the two brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, who they said remained at-large.
French Police issue wanted poster for #CharlieHebdo suspects, Kouachi brothers: "on the loose, armed & dangerous" pic.twitter.com/TrnPk9h6Mm
— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) January 8, 2015
The AFP reported that Paris police had issued arrest warrants for the two suspects and that they were said to be “likely armed and dangerous.”
Jan. 7, 2015, 8:45 p.m.: ABC News, France 24, and the AFP are reporting that the youngest of the three suspects in Wednesday’s attack has surrendered to police.
BREAKING: Youngest suspect wanted in Paris terror attack has surrendered to police, French police tell @ABC News.
— ABC News (@ABC) January 8, 2015
NBC’s Pete Williams, meanwhile, appeared to walk back an earlier report that one suspect had been killed and the other two had been detained. “To be fair here we just don’t know exactly what the situation is in France,” he said on MSNBC.
Earlier, Williams had reported that two senior U.S. counterterrorism had told NBC that the three men were no longer at large.
Jan. 7, 2015, 6:50 p.m.: NBC News is reporting that one of the suspects in Wednesday’s attack against the offices of Charlie Hebdo has been killed, while two others are in custody:
BREAKING: 1 suspect in the Paris attack has been killed and the remaining 2 are in custody, senior U.S. officials say - @PeteWilliamsNBC
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) January 7, 2015
The news comes as the Associated Press named the alleged attackers as French brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad. One of the brothers had actually been previously tried on terror charges:
Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency, and sentenced to 18 months in prison. During his 2008 trial, he told the court he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib.
The New York Times noted that Kouachi did not go to prison after his conviction because the time he spent in pre-trial detention counted as time served.
More from the Times:
Prosecutors said that Mr. Kouachi had wanted to attack Jewish targets in France, but had been dissuaded by a preacher who encouraged him to go to Iraq instead. In court in 2008, Mr. Kouachi, who smoked marijuana when not studying Islam, had insisted that his main interest was hip-hop, not jihad.
Jan. 7, 2015, 5:05 p.m.: Bloomberg News has a devastating tick-tock of Wednesday morning's horrible events in Paris. The organization reports that two masked gunmen with Kalashnikovs knocked on the wrong door before attacking the offices of Charlie Hebdo:
After learning from a pair of maintenance workers that their target was two doors over, the gunmen killed one of the unfortunate duo.
The journalists had been in their weekly editorial meeting at the time of the attack, which lasted five minutes, Bloomberg reports. The initial attack took the lives of 11 people, including some of the magazine’s top editorial voices and a police officer who was assigned to protect the publication.
The two killers were aided by a getaway driver in a black Citroen C3. After leaving the scene, the suspects shot and killed a police officer, the 12th victim. Paris Prosecutor François Molins reported that after wounding the officer, they executed him as he lay on the ground.
As of Wednesday night, the three men had reportedly been identified (see details below) but were still at large.
Jan. 7, 2015, 4:25 p.m.: Reuters is reporting that three suspects have been identified. They include two brothers, aged 32 and 34, from the Paris region, and a third 18-year-old man from the city of Reims, which is 80 miles outside of Paris. A police source told Reuters that one of the brothers had been tried before on terrorism charges.
Jan. 7, 2015, 1:45 p.m.: Paris prosecutor François Molins spoke to reporters on Wednesday and confirmed several details about the attack. He said that it took place around 11:30 a.m. local time, that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” during the attack, that they said they were avenging the Prophet Mohammed, and that in addition to the 12 dead, at least 11 people were wounded, four seriously. Molins also confirmed that at least one police officer assigned to protect the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo was among the dead, and that at least two gunmen remained at large. Earlier in the day, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve had said that three gunmen were believed to be involved.
Jan. 7, 2015, 12:15 p.m.: There were reportedly three gunmen involved in Wednesday's terrorist attack on the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo. They are reported to have escaped, and remained at large as evening arrived in Paris.
Hundreds of protesters were seen organizing in Paris’ Place de la République, some of them holding up pens in unity with the journalists who were attacked.
Placé de la république qui se remplit vite on brandit Charlie hebdo et Stylos #nopasaran #repliquerepublicaine pic.twitter.com/qgrwDHutBf
— Eric Coquerel (@ericcoquerel) January 7, 2015
French television network France 24 was reporting that the victims included two police officers who were assigned to protect the publication, along with journalists and cartoonists. Among the dead being reported by the New York Times were Charlie Hebdo's editor-in-chief, Stephane Charbonnier, and cartoonists Georges Wolinski, Bernard Verlhac, and Jean Cabut.
In a 2012 interview with ABC News, Charbonnier described why his publication, which had previously published provocative imagery of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, does what it does.
"Our job is not to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead,” Charbonnier said. “We can’t live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than to live like a rat."
Original post from 8:44 AM: Masked gunmen attacked a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people, according to police reports.
French television was playing video footage purported to be of the attacks. In the video multiple gunshots can be heard, along with shouts of “Allahu Akbar.”
The attackers were still at large after the shootings.
“They will be hunted down as long as necessary,” said French president François Hollande, who was speaking from the scene.
“There is no doubt [this] was a terrorist attack,” Hollande added.
Hollande said that he was calling a cabinet meeting to increase security checks at places that might be vulnerable to a similar attack.
The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, stoked riot fears in 2012 when it published nude cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The headquarters, based in central Paris, were also firebombed in 2011 after the publication announced plans to put a caricature of Mohammed on its cover.
Depictions of Mohammed are considered prohibited by Islamic tradition.
In 2006, Charlie Hebdo republished caricatures of Muhammad that originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and sparked sometimes-violent international protests.
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