The State Department said Wednesday that it is still looking into ties between the Charlie Hebdo attackers in Paris and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Department spokesperson Marie Harf said that a video in which a senior AQAP leader takes responsibility for the mass killing was deemed authentic by American intelligence agents, but said that US officials are not yet ready to fully assess what role the Yemeni group might have played.
“What does it mean, that ‘they did it’?” she said at a daily press briefing. “Was there ideological guidance? Was there money? Was there training? Those are the specific claims we’re still going through, so I’m not authenticating every substantive piece of that video.”
“We do believe the video came from AQAP,” she added. “Clearly, that has significance.”
The Intercept national security reporter and Yemen expert Jeremy Scahill, who first reported AQAP’s claim of responsibility for the attack, noted that “even with an official statement from AQAP’s leadership, it would be difficult to prove that AQAP indeed sponsored the raid on Charlie Hebdo.” He said that there is, however, “seemingly credible information” indicating Cherif and Said Kouachi, the assailant brothers, did spend time in Yemen with AQAP.
According to CBS News, the AQAP official in the video, Sheikh Nasr Ben Ali al-Aanesi, said that the group “ordered, planned and funded the attack.”
As The Sentinel noted on Jan. 7, the day of the attack, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) cited the alleged Yemen connection as justification to keep the prison at Guantanamo Bay open indefinitely.
In response to another question about Al-Qaeda and the War in Afghanistan, Harf said that she didn’t believe last week’s attacks in Paris were related, and cast doubt on the idea of a total victory in a War on Terror.
“That’s, I think, an unrealistic standard—to try and prevent every single act of terrorism from happening anywhere in the world. I don’t think that’s possible,” she said, listing what she described as US and coalition success in the war in Afghanistan.
As The Sentinel noted last month, however, a Gallup poll showed a record number of Afghans described themselves as “suffering” and two-thirds say economic conditions are getting worse.
