PARIS
Police have confiscated a mobile phone from the prison cell of the alleged mentor of the Kouachi brothers believed to be responsible for the recent deadly attack on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The confiscation of the phone belonging to Djamel Beghal, who was jailed in March 2005 on terrorism charges, came as police raided several cells of "known radical Islamist inmates" and also confiscated SIM cards and USBs, French radio RTL reported on Monday.
The investigations were launched to establish how such devices made their way to the prisoners, and are being analyzed by judicial police, according to RTL.
Beghal, a French Algerian national who worked as a recruiter for Al-Qaeda in Europe, was charged with attempting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He served eight years of a 10-year sentence and was released under house arrest in 2009.
Paris bombing
However, Beghal was soon afterwards sent to another 12 years in jail for a 2010 plot to free an inmate convicted of the 1995 bombing of a Paris Metro.
Surveillance photos released in 2010 reportedly show Beghal meeting two men in a park in the presence of Cherif Kouachi.
Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four people in an attack on a kosher grocery store in Paris on Jan. 7, reportedly visited Beghal the same year with his partner Hayat Boumeddiene, who is now believed to be in Syria. The pair brought him food and money.
Coulibaly, discovered with a weapons cache, was sentenced to four years and released in 2014.
Said and Cherif Kouachi and Coulibaly were all killed by police in a gunfights in Jan. 9.
