Cherif Kouachi (29 November 1982-9 January 2015) was a member of the Buttes-Chaumont Network of al-Qaeda-affiliated French terrorists. Along with older brother Said Kouachi, he massacred 12 people at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and was killed in a manhunt.
Biography[]
Cherif Kouachi was born on 29 November 1982 to a Franco-Algerian Muslim family in Gennevilliers, Paris, France. Cherif was the younger brother of Said Kouachi by two years. Cherif was known as a loser, working as a pizza delivery man that used all of his money on buying hashish to smoke. He later worked as a fishmonger, fitness instructor, and rapper, but he secretly had Islamist views. In 2005 he was arrested while heading to the Syrian Arab Republic, hoping to later join jihadists fighting the US Army and Coalition forces in Iraq. While in jail, he met fellow terrorist Djamel Beghal, and he later became a student of French imam Farid Benyettou, a radical imam of the Addawa Mosque in the 19th Arrondissement to the south of the Seine River in Paris. In 2008 he was arrested again for helping French jihadists in joining al-Qaeda in Iraq and in 2010 he was prosecuted (but not arrested) for planning to spring Smain Ait Ali Belkacem from jail.
On 7 January 2015, Cherif and Said carried out an audacious attack against the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in revenge for their 2005 Jyllands Posten caricature of Prophet Muhammad. They killed 12 people, including the major cartoonists. They escaped after a firefight with police, hijacking two cars and driving away. They escaped to Dammartin-en-Goele in the suburbs, where they took a hostage at an industrial estate. On 9 January, after a short siege, the two were killed while coming out of the estate firing.