The French authorities have placed in detention a fugitive suspected of helping to organise the 2015 attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, reports The National.
Peter Cherif was taken into custody after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport from Djibouti where he was arrested a week ago. France's defence minister says he played an “important role in organising” the Charlie Hebdo attack.
Mr Cherif, also known as Abu Hamza, was a close friend of two brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi, who killed 11 people at Charlie Hebdo's offices and a policeman nearby in Paris.
The two brothers attacked Charlie Hebdo, angered by the magazines crude and offensive depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. They died two days later after a shootout with French police.
Cherif converted to Islam in the late 1990s and was a veteran in the Yemen, Syria and Iraq conflicts.