Charlie Hebdo suspects well-known to anti-terror police

One had a long history of jihadist ties and links to a key Islamic State militant while the other was on a US watchlist and trained with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, yet the Charlie Hebdo suspects still managed to slip under the radar of French intelligence.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said, 34, are accused of carrying out the deadly attacks on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday that left 12 dead.

Born to Algerian parents in Paris and orphaned at a young age, they grew up in the east of the city not far from the site of this week's attack.

According to US officials, Said Kouachi was known by French intelligence to have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received training from Al-Qaeda's affiliate there in small arms combat and marksmanship.

Both were on a US database and no-fly list as terror suspects.Cherif's history with jihadist networks is even better documented and dates back over a decade to his days as part of the "Butte-Chaumont network", named after a park in the 19th arrondissement of Paris where its members lived.

This group of young, radical Muslims helped transport people to Iraq to join Al-Qaeda's fight against US forces at the height of their intervention.

The younger Kouachi, sometimes going by the name Abu Issan, was only 22 when the network was broken up by French police. He was arrested just as he was about to fly to Syria in 2005, from which he was due to travel on to the fight in Iraq.

In an interview shortly after his arrest published by the Pittsburgh Tribune, his lawyer Vincent Ollivier said Kaouchi, then 22, was not particularly religious.

"He drank, smoked pot, slept with his girlfriend and delivered pizzas for a living," the newspaper reported.

At his trial in 2008, Kaouchi said he was inspired by the abuse of detainees by US troops at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, but was relieved he did not have to go through with the trip.

He told the court he was working at a supermarket and his main interest was rap music, not jihad. An amateur video of his early MC skills -- shot a year before his arrest -- is now circulating on social media.

Despite his claims to being a reluctant fundamentalist, Kouachi was sentenced to three years in prison -- half of it suspended -- and his contact with radicals only grew.

Within months of getting out, he was embroiled in another plot, this time a failed prison break for Algerian Islamist Smain Ait Ali Belkacem in May 2010.