(AP) French authorities handed preliminary terrorism charges Sunday to a fugitive extremist who is suspected of fighting U.S. forces in Iraq and helping to organize the 2015 shooting attack at satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people.
Peter Cherif, who recently was arrested in the former French colony of Djibouti and expelled to France, was immediately taken into custody and charged upon his arrival Sunday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Cherif is accused of criminal association with a terrorist enterprise. France’s defense minister says he played an “important role in organizing” the Charlie Hebdo attack, though his specific actions were unclear.
