Robert Spencer
Abou Hamza, formerly known as Peter Chérif, can look back on his life’s work with satisfaction. Nearly four years after the jihad massacre he masterminded, virtually no one in the Western world would dare say or do anything that would offend Islamic sensibilities. When Pamela Geller and I staged our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in May 2015 and it was attacked by jihadis, Pamela Geller was widely excoriated in the American establishment media for daring to “provoke” the poor dears. Now Twitter and other social media giants are enforcing Pakistan’s Sharia blasphemy laws. Abou Hamza has been arrested, but his victory is near-total.
“Alleged Charlie Hebdo Islamist Attack Mastermind Detained in Africa,” by Victoria Friedman, Breitbart, December 21, 2018:
Peter Chérif, who is suspected of being behind the Islamist shootings at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, has been apprehended in Djibouti and is expected to be extradited to France within days.
Also known as Abou Hamza, the 36-year-old Paris-born Islamist was arrested by French authorities in the small east African nation on December 16th, according to The Times.
Chérif is a known associate of Charlie Hebdo attackers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, having been in frequent contact with them ahead of the shootings and being part of the same Parisian al-Qaeda cell, the Buttes-Chaumont network, which was known for sending fighters to Iraq in the early 2000s.
The Kouachi brothers stormed the magazine office on January 7th, 2015, fatally shooting 12 journalists and injuring 11 others. It is believed the attack was inspired by Charlie Hebdo printing editions featuring satires of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, which is forbidden in Islam….
The son of a French Caribbean father and Tunisian mother, Peter Chérif graduated from petty crime to armed robbery before coming to the attention of French security services in the late ’90s — around the time he befriended the Kouachi brothers.
He was first arrested in Iraq in 2004 after fighting for al-Qaeda and was jailed for 15 years before escaping the Baghdad prison in 2007 after an insurgent attack, travelling to Syria.