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Paris: Did France Lose Track of a Terror Suspect?

Lee Smith on the Charlie Hebdo massacre

Former Senior Fellow
People hold placards reading in French 'I am Charlie' during a gathering on the Place de Republique in Paris, on January 8, 2015. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
Caption
People hold placards reading in French 'I am Charlie' during a gathering on the Place de Republique in Paris, on January 8, 2015. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)

French authorities have reportedly indentified":https://twitter.com/wellsla/status/552928770756468737/photo/1 the three suspects in today’s massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices—Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality has not yet been identified, and two French nationals, Said Kouachi and his younger brother Cherif Kouachi. The French appear to have been well acquainted with Cherif since he was "arrested in Paris in 2005 with the intention of traveling to Damascus in order to get to Iraq to kill American troops.

As part of the so-called 19th arrondissement network, named for a Paris working-class neighborhood with many Muslim families, Kouachi told the court that would eventually sentence him to three years that he was inspired by detainee abuse by U.S. troops at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Kouachi had wanted to attack Jewish targets in France, but a local imam affiliated with of the 19th arrondissement cell, Farid Benyettou, 27, had told him that France wasn't a "land of jihad."

In other words, French authorities have known about Kouachi and his activities for more than a decade. Moreover, one French media source reports that Kouachi returned from Syria during the summer, where he was presumably involved in the three and a half year civil war there. The likely return of thousands of EU nationals from Syria constitutes a major security threat for European intelligence services. What happened during those four months after Kouachi came back? Did the French lose track of a man they knew constituted a major threat to domestic security?