A French terror suspect linked by police to the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people has been arrested in Djibouti, reports The Guardian.
Peter Cherif, 36, also known as Abou Hamza, is to be transferred to France for questioning over allegations he masterminded the shootings in Paris at the satirical newspaper.
Cherif was a close friend of brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, who burst into Charlie Hebdo’s office on January 7th 2015 and gunned down staff at an editorial conference. The brothers escaped, killing a police officer on the way out, and fled north. They died in a shootout at a printworks two days later.
The attack came after the newspaper carried satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad on its front page.
Speaking about Cherif’s arrest, the French defence minister, Florence Parly, told RTL radio: “It shows the fight against terrorism is a long-haul action and if you stay committed then you obtain results.”
Cherif, one of France’s most-wanted terror suspects, had been on the run since 2011 when he escaped after handing himself in to French authorities in Syria.
Born in Paris, Cherif moved from petty crime to armed robbery and drew the attention of French intelligence services in the late 1990s. Around this time he met the Kouachi brothers, who were also living in eastern Paris.
They were all believed to have been part of a group known as the Buttes-Chaumont network, named after a local park, that was sending jihadis to fight in Iraq. When police rounded up the network, they discovered Cherif had already left.