Clockwise from top left: Amedy Coulibaly, Hayat Boumeddiene, Said Kouachi, and his brother, Cherif Kouachi.(Photo: French police)
Twin hostage standoffs rocked France on Friday as police mounted simultaneous attacks, killing two terror suspects holed up in a warehouse north of Paris and a gunman who seized hostages at a kosher supermarket in the capital.
Here's what's known about the suspects:
HAYAT BOUMEDDIENE, 26: WANTED
Boumeddiene is wanted in connection with the shooting death of a policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 27, on Thursday and may be the girlfriend and accomplice of supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly, 32. Boumeddiene is Coulibaly's common-law wife. She remains at large and is believed to be armed and dangerous.
Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is wanted in connection with the shooting of a French policewoman.(Photo: Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire)
AMEDY COULIBALY, 32: KILLED
Coulibaly — suspected in the shooting of the policewoman Thursday — was the gunman behind the supermarket attack Friday.
In a telephone interview with French broadcaster BFMTV during the standoff, Coulibaly claimed to belong to the Islamic State and said the attacks were "coordinated" with the two brothers accused of the mass murders at a French satirical newspaper Wednesday.
Coulibaly and the brothers "are all part of the same network," said Thomas Joscelyn, a terrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "The attack and what they're trying to do is consistent with what (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) had been trying to do."
Coulibaly was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in a plan to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, who was convicted in a bombing of a rail station museum in 1995, according to the French weekly Le Journal de Dimanche. He was released early from prison.
Amedy Coulibaly has been identified by French officials as the gunman holding as many as five people at gunpoint at a kosher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Jan. 9.(Photo: Paris Prefecture)
CHERIF KOUACHI, 32: KILLED
In a telephone interview with French broadcaster BFMTV during the standoff Friday, Cherif Kouachi, accused in the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, claimed he was sent and financed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Around 2004, Kouachi met Farid Benyettou, a radical street preacher, according to court records revealed in 2008. Kouachi helped Benyettou recruit, train and send at least a dozen young men to fight alongside al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Police arrested Kouachi in 2008, days before he planned to leave for Iraq via Syria. His lawyer argued that his client had gotten involved with the wrong crowd and was a reluctant participant.
In 2010, Kouachi was arrested again, accused by France's Anti-Terrorism Directorate of participating in the failed plot to free Belkacem, the railway museum bomber.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, was wanted in connection with an attack at the satirical weekly "Charlie Hebdo."(Photo: Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire)
SAID KOUACHI, 34: DEAD
French authorities told their U.S. counterparts that Said Kouachi, 34, made a trek to Yemen in 2011, according to a U.S. official who is not authorized to comment on the case publicly. He said French authorities believed Kouachi traveled there before Sept. 30, 2011, when the senior al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed by a U.S. drone strike.
Whether Kouachi had any direct contact with al-Awlaki was not known, the official said.
Both Kouachis were well-known to French police, and their names have been on U.S. ''no-fly'' terror lists for years, the U.S. official said. They were French citizens, born in Paris to parents of Algerian descent.
Said Kouachi, 34, was wanted in connection with an attack at the satirical weekly "Charlie Hebdo."(Photo: Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire)
HAMYD MOURAD, 18: SURRENDERED TO POLICE
Not much is known about Mourad or his connection to the Kouachi brothers. A third suspect in the assault on the newspaper's Paris offices, Mourad surrendered at a police station early Thursday in Charleville-Mezieres, a small town in France's eastern Champagne region, Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said.
Mourad's role in the attack, if any, remains unclear. The teenager has an alibi, telling authorities he was at school at the time of the mass murder, the BBC reported.
Contributing: Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY; the Associated Press
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