French police Handout photos released by French police in Paris of Cherif Kouachi, 32, left, and his brother Said, 34.
A massive manhunt is underway for brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, the main suspects in a terrorist shooting attack in Paris that killed 12 people on Wednesday.
The brothers have been well known to French authorities for at least a decade and reportedly had known connections to Islamic terrorists.
More is known about Cherif, 32, than Said, 34, but both appear to have jihadist backgrounds.
Both were French nationals of Algerian descent and come from secular backgrounds, according to The New York Times. A French newspaper report cited by The Times said Cherif was raised in foster care in western France and trained to be a fitness instructor before he moved to Paris, where he lived with his brother and a convert to Islam.
Cherif reportedly worked delivering pizzas and as a shop assistant and fishmonger while he lived in France.
He was influenced by the radical Paris mosque preacher Farid Benyettou, the Times report said. Benyettou was known as the spiritual leader of the terror cell "Filiere des Buttes Chaumont," a group that helped funnel fighters into Iraq during the American invasion, according to Bloomberg.
The terror cell's recruits were reportedly going to fight alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former Al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed in 2006.
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While they were involved with Benyettou and the terror cell, they reportedly learned how to use automatic weapons like the ones used in Wednesday's attack of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which has published cartoons that some Muslims find offensive.
Experts, citing the video of the attack, believe the attackers were professionally trained.
A French magazine cited a police source saying the brothers were "smalltime delinquents who became radicalized,"according to The Telegraph.
Cherif, who has also taken the name Abu Issen, was linked to the cell in 2005 and has been arrested twice in connection with terrorists in France.
He was arrested in 2005 days before he was set to fly to Syria and then to Iraq, The Telegraph reports. In 2008, Cherif was convicted on terrorism charges related to the 2005 case and sentenced to three years in prison with an 18-month suspended sentence.
During his trial, Cherif said he was outraged by images of the torture of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison run by the US in Iraq. He also mentioned wanting to attack Jewish targets in France, according to The Times.
He said he "really believed in the idea" of jihad, according to the Associated Press.