Said and Cherif Kouachi: who are the two brothers suspected of launching Charlie Hebdo attack?

Manhunt underway across Europe for French-Algerian Muslim brothers believed to be linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

By Barney Henderson, and agencies

10:15AM GMT 08 Jan 2015

Charlie Hebdo attack: latest updates

Elite French forces were searching on Thursday for the two brothers suspected of launching the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead.

Police said they are considered "armed and dangerous" and Manuel Valls, the prime minister, said the terror threat to France was "unprecedented".

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was being hunted along with his older brother Said, 34. Both are jihadists who have been well-known to anti-terror police for many years.

The brothers were born in Paris's 10th arrondissement.

Cherif , who sometimes went by the name Abu Issen, was part of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" of around 10 young Parisians that helped send would-be jihadists to join al-Qaeda in Iraq during the US-led invasion in the mid-2000s.
He was arrested just before he was due to fly to Syria and on to Iraq - and was later sentenced to three years in prison, including an 18-month suspended sentence.
Two years later in May 2010, his name was cited in a police report related to the attempted prison escape of Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, a former member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that carried out a spate of bombings and a plane hijacking in France in the 1990s.
Belkacem was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 for a bombing at the Musee D'Orsay rail station in Paris in October 1995 that left 30 injured.
^{Headshots released by French Police showing Said, left, and Cherif Kouachi (Photo: AFP)}
Said was also named in the Belkacem plot, but neither brother was charged due to lack of evidence.
A police source told Le Point news magazine that the gunmen were "smalltime delinquents who became radicalised".
Cherif was also suspected of being close to another key French jihadist, Djamel Beghal, who spent 10 years in prison for planning attacks.
Cherif and Beghal were suspected of participating in militant training programmes together, although charges in this case were dropped against Kouachi.
A third suspect, the Kouachi brothers' presumed accomplice, who handed himself into police in northeastern France was identified as Mourad Hamyd, their 18-year-old step-brother.
He is suspected of helping the two brothers in the attack, with one witness saying a third man was in the car when they made their getaway.
Hamyd presented himself to police in the town of Charleville-Mezieres "after seeing his name on social networks", a source close to the investigation told AFP.
Several of his school friends had taken to Twitter saying he had been in class with them at the time of the attack, using the hashtag £MouradHamydInnocent.
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11332411/Said-and-Cherif-Kouachi-who-are-the-two-brothers-suspected-of-launching-Charlie-Hebdo-attack.html