Carrying out France’s worst terror attack in more than 50 years likely cost the perpetrators less than the price of a new car. Despite claims of support from foreign terrorist organizations, the attackers probably raised the money at home in France.
The Kalashnikov rifles and other weapons used by the attackers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, likely cost less than €10,000 ($11,800), according to Jean-Paul Rouiller, director of the Geneva Center for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, a Swiss research group. Including the cost of Saïd Kouachi’s 2011 trip to Yemen, where he may have received training from al-Qaeda, the total price tag for the deadly attacks by the three men might have reached about $20,000.
In a telephone interview with a French TV channel before he died in a shootout with police, Chérif Kouachi said the Jan. 7 killings at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were financed by al-Qaeda in Yemen. Coulibaly, in a video released on Sunday on Islamist social-media networks, said he had acted on behalf of the Islamic State terror group. Both Al Qaeda and Islamic State have raised millions by extracting ransom payments from France and other countries for the release of hostages. Could some of this money have come back to France to finance the attacks?
That's unlikely, according to both anti-terrorist experts and the words of Coulibaly himself. In his video, Coulibaly said he gave the Kouachi brothers "a few thousand euros" to supplement what they had raised to prepare for the newspaper attack. He didn't say whether Islamic State gave him money. But for what Rouiller describes as "such a low-cost operation," financing from abroad would be unlikely. Moving money across borders would risk attracting attention from authorities, Rouiller says, and terrorist leaders including Islamic State's Abu Muhammad al-Adnani have encouraged sympathizers in Western countries to use "their own means" to wage jihad at home.
Coulibaly described him and the Kouachi brothers as "a team," even though al Qaeda and the Islamic State are bitter rivals. "Never in a million years would they have planned an attack together," says Loretta Napoleoni, an Italian economist who is an expert on terrorist financing. The French attackers probably coordinated their efforts because they knew each other and shared similar views. "In Europe," she says, "the theological umbrella is the same."
It's not known how Saïd Kouachi paid for his 2011 trip to Yemen, where he reportedly spent time with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the convicted "underwear bomber" who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. But it's likely that Kouachi raised the money in France. In 2005, when Chérif Kouachi was arrested as he prepared to travel to Syria for terrorist training, the lawyer for an alleged co-conspirator said that would-be jihadists were expected to raise €8,000 apiece to cover their expenses.
Another question is where the Paris attackers got their weaponry, which included multiple Kalashnikovs, at least one rocket launcher, explosives, and a large supply of ammunition. "They looked like they stepped out of the Bourne Supremacy," Napoleoni says.
The case of Mohammed Merah, a Muslim extremist who killed seven people in a 2012 terror attack around Toulouse, France may offer some clues. Before he died in a shootout with security forces, Merah told a French TV network that he had amassed an arsenal including three Kalashnikovs with money from robberies and break-ins. Merah's contacts in the criminal underworld probably helped supply the firearms, Rouiller says.
While civilian ownership of such weaponry is illegal in France, police say the black market is awash with "war weapons" illegally imported from the Balkans and elsewhere. At least a dozen people were killed with Kalashnikovs last year in cities including Marseille and Toulouse, where the rifle is favored by local gangs. The going black-market rate for a Kalashnikov is about €1,000.
Coulibaly, like Merah, had a long criminal record including five robbery convictions. Chérif Kouachi appears to have dabbled in crime as well. Police placed him under surveillance after he was imprisoned over his role in a group recruiting jihad fighters from France. But according to the French magazine l’Express, police who listened in on his phone calls concluded that after leaving prison he had gotten involved in selling counterfeit clothing and shoes. "For the police, he had left behind the world of terrorism for small-time delinquency," the magazine reported. "No sign of danger was detected."
