Cherif Kouachi, the 32-year-old hunted along with his older brother Said for the attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is a jihadist who has been well-known to anti-terror police for many years. Cherif, who was born on November 28, 1982 in Paris not far from where the attack took place, had already been jailed in 2008 for his role in sending fighters to Iraq. Sometimes going by the name Abu Issen, he was part of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" that helped send would-be jihadists to join Al Qaeda in Iraq during the US-led invasion in the mid-2000s. He was arrested just before he was due to fly to Syria and on to Iraq -- and was later sentenced to three years in prison, including an 18-month suspended sentence. Two years later, his name was cited in a police report related to the attempted prison escape of Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, a former member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that carried out a spate of bombings and a plane hijacking in France in the 1990s.
