The wife of a man who it is claimed recruited one of the Paris terror attacks gunmen lives in Leicester, it has emerged.
Sylvie Beghal, a French citizen living in Spinney Hills, Leicester, is the wife of convicted terrorist Djamel Beghal.
The couple also used to live in the Abbey Lane area of the city between 1998 and 2000.
The Telegraph has reported that it is understood Beghal met Paris shooter Cherif Kouachi in jail in 2008 where they became friends and remained close after being released.
Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said carried out the massacre at the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.
They were killed during a stand-off north of Paris on Friday.
The Telegraph has also reported that Amedy Coulibaly and his girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, suspected of murdering a policewoman and the Jewish grocery store hostage-taking, were also mentored by Beghal.
Hayat Boumeddiene (left), and gunman Amedy Coulibaly
The Mercury visited Mrs Beghal's address earlier today, but no one was home.
The Telegraph has reported that Mrs Beghal said she did not know Chérif Kouachi, and claimed her husband had "nothing to do" with the Paris killings.
The supermarket shootout on Friday which resulted in the deaths of four hostages
The newspaper has also said Mrs Beghal is living in the city on benefits.
Her husband Djamel Beghal is also believed to have set up terror cells in the Midlands, as well as in Germany, France and Spain, and had strong links to both Abu Hamza, the radical Muslim cleric who today jailed in the US for supporting terrorism and Abu Qatada, who was once described as Osama bin Laden's emissary in Europe.
It is also being reported that Djamel recruited the shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 attacks.
In 2003, Beghal was given a maximum 10 years by a Parisian court for leading a 2001 plan to send a suicide bomber into American embassy in Paris.
He is reported to be currently in prison in France.
Mrs Beghal, who was born in Afghanistan, moved to France in 1987 and married Djamel in 1990.
Seven years later they moved to Leicester.
They lived in Rose Street, near Abbey Lane, Leicester.
After briefly moving back to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2000, she returned to Leicester.
Mourners showing solidarity with the slogan Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie)
Speaking in 2011 to a magazine, she said: "I wanted to educate my children surrounded by Muslim brothers and sisters.
"I wanted them to live in an Islamic environment. It is not possible in France since we cannot really live in a community.
"Most of all, I was asked to remove my headscarf to work. For me, it was unimaginable."
She has always denied the allegations that her husband was involved in terrorism despite him confessing to authorities that he was conspiring to destroy the US embassy in Paris.
In 2011, she was stopped by police after arriving at East Midlands Airport from Paris. She was detained under the Terrorism Act but refused to answer questions about her movements, and later lost a human rights case over her detention.
