Djamel Beghal, an al Qaeda recruiter in Europe, was tapped in 2001 by senior Osama Bin Laden operative Abu Zubaydah to organize a terror cell to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He was stopped in Dubai on his way home from Afghanistan and days later on July 24, 2001, former CIA Director George Tenet was briefed on Beghal.
Tenet confirms the “discussion of the pending deportation from the UAE to France of Djamel Beghal, who intended to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris,” in his biography. On August 6, 2001, Tenet briefed President George W. Bush in a classified presidential daily brief, entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the U.S.”
Terror experts describe Beghal as a key figure linking generations of European terrorists. They include shoe bomber Richard Reid, 9/11’s Zacarias Moussaoui and cleric Abu Hamza al Masri, all of whom Beghal knew from his association with the radical Finsbury Mosque in London.
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Coulibaly also was killed January 9, after a shooting at a kosher grocery store in Paris. Police say Boumeddiene escaped the scene of the shooting.
CNN’s Scott Bronstein and Paul Cruickshank contributed to this report.
