French authorities have reportedly 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 , named for a Paris working-class neighborhood with many Muslim families, Kouachi 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 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 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?