‘Attacker lived with al-Qaeda fighter’

One of the gunmen responsible for last week’s massacre at a French magazine claimed to have lived with the Nigerian who tried to carry out the failed al-Qaeda “underwear bomb” plot five years ago, a Yemeni reporter has said.

Journalist and researcher Mohammed Kibsi said he met Said Kouachi in 2010 in the capital Sanaa while the gunman was studying Arabic. “He was very polite and had a sense of humour so for me I could not expect that a few years later he would be the suspect of a terror attack,” said Mr Kibsi.

Kouachi said that he had lived with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was convicted of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, the journalist said.