Paris: A Shambolic End to a Testing Time.

As I was going to bed last night I was debating whether to point out that clearly lacking in an extraction plan or a wider support network Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi - the suspects in Wednesday's (7/1/15) terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper - were very much in escape and evasion mode. So while the search for them could have taken anything up to a couple of months I no longer considered them a substantial risk to the public.

The need for me to make a decision was removed when this morning the police did catch the Kouachi brothers and cornered them in a small print works in Dammartin-en-Goele on the outskirts of Paris. I actually found this rather amusing because with only one hostage, no food, no water, no heat and no power it was only a matter of time before the brother's would have been forced to surrender or commit suicide.

However a few hours after the Dammartin-en-Goele siege began Amedy Coulibaly - who grew up in the same area of Paris as the Kouachi brothers and along with his presumed  girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene is a suspect in Thursday's (8/1/15) shooting of a police officer in Paris - walked into a Jewish supermarket in Paris and took 8 people hostage. With multiple hostages and plenty of supplies this obviously put Coulibaly in a much stronger position then the Kouachi brothers.

If they weren't in communication prior to the attacks then the Kouachis and Coulibaly started talking to each other by phone once the twin sieges had begun. This led to Coulibaly to threaten to start killing hostages if the Kouachi brother's were not allowed to leave Dammartin-en-Goele. This obviously put the police in a very difficult situation but from the comfort of my sofa it seemed one that could easily be dealt with.

I would have begun by moving everyone into assault positions at both locations so they could have instantly responded to any increased threat. I would then have cut the telephone communication between Coulibaly and the Kouachis. I would have then fired a lot of tear gas into the Dammartin-en-Goele print works to make it look as though an assault was taking place. This would obviously have been broadcast on TV for Coulibaly to see. If he'd then started killing hostages there would have been no option other then for an assault. However if - as I think was more likely - Coulibaly hesitated and failed to kill hostages at that moment of maximum provocation it would have made it much easier to force him to surrender. Meanwhile the Kouachis without being able to talk to Coulibaly for moral support would have to learn to put up with fresh volleys of tear gas hour or so until they surrendered.

Sadly though the police decided to do none of this. At this early stage it appears that they made no attempt to break the communication between the Kouachis and Coulibaly and instead mounted an assault in Dammartin-en-Goele. In this assault it appears that the Kouachis were both killed, two police officers were wounded and the hostage was freed unharmed. Then after an inexplicable delay of around 10-15 minutes the police in Paris launched an assault on the supermarket. This seems to have gone very badly with at least 4 hostages being killed, Coulibaly being killed and Boumeddiene managing to escape the scene.

Obviously it is very easy for me to criticise while sitting at home - for example there is some suggestion that the Kouachis may have forced the police's hand by attempt to escape, guns blazing. However with dead hostages, dead suspects and Boumeddiene managing to escape meaning that the situation still isn't over it is impossible to declare this operation a success.

17:50 on 9/1/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 19:40 on 10/1/15 (UK date) to add;

Although it was denied at the time it has now been confirmed that the 4 hostages who were killed at the Jewish supermarket were killed in the first few minutes of the incident rather then in the police raid that brought the siege to an end.

It has also been confirmed that Hayat Boumeddiene (aka "The Bride of Erdogan") left France and arrived in Turkey on January 2nd (2/1/15) and therefore was not present at the supermarket siege nor Thursday's killing of a police officer and wasn't even in France at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack. While I believe he is still being questioned it has also been established that Hamyd Mourad did not directly participate in Wednesday's attack meaning that the third suspect was actually Amedy Coulibaly. Therefore with all the suspects either dead or no longer in France I now consider this situation to be at an end.

Finally after numerous attempts to deny it yesterday evening Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed that they had directed the attacks and in an effort to make themselves sound much scarier then they actually claimed that more attacks against France were imminent. This threat is nonsense because their involvement in the French attacks was so minimal I consider it to be inspirational rather then direction. Essentially after Charlie Hebdo published the October edition - which is currently my Twitter avatar - that showed a fighter from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) beheading the Prophet AQAP published on the Internet the details of Charlie Hebdo staff along with when and where they have their editorial meetings and a general call for them to be killed in revenge.

Also I should point out though that while AQAP are formally allied with ISIL Al Nusra Front (ANF) who are Al-Qaeda's branch in Syria and Iraq are actually at war with ISIL. So confusingly while they have "Al-Qaeda" in their name AQAP are considered part of ISIL rather then Al-Qaeda. Just to confuse matters further many western news agencies - CNN in particular - have taken to referring to AQAP as "Al-Qaeda in Yemen" this term hasn't been valid since January 2009 when Al-Qaeda in Yemen merged with Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia to form AQAP.