The terrorist attack in Paris targeting the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was not the first al-Qaeda plot to attack cartoonists in Europe. A plot foiled in 2009 to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was eerily similar to the Paris operation and was connected directly to the senior al-Qaeda leadership.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed credit for the Paris attack in a series of messages, tweets and a video released Jan. 13. The 11-minute video featured AQAP ideologue Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who unequivocally said AQAP "chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation." This is consistent with media reports that at least one of the two French-Algerian brothers who carried out the attack trained with AQAP in Yemen.

The most interesting part of the video is the prominence it gives to al-Qaeda's emir, Ayman al-Zawahri, whose orders it says led to the "implementation" of the "blessed Battle of Paris." The video also ridiculed the foreign leaders who marched in Paris to show solidarity with "satanic" France.

AQAP's leader Nasir Abdel Karim al-Wuhayshi was Osama bin Laden's secretary and assistant for many years. He fled to Iran after the fall of the Taliban's Islamic emirate in 2001. Iran handed him over to the Yemeni government two years later, but he broke out of prison in 2006. In January 2009 he announced the formation of AQAP, uniting al-Qaeda's groups in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and pledged loyalty to bin Laden and Zawahri. In 2013 Zawahri designated Wuhayshi his second-in-command and heir.