Man who helped radicalize Paris gunmen now nurse at hospital which received victims

Farid Benyettou was off duty on Wednesday at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital when the wounded were brought there but was meant to back at work on Friday, before hospital authorities took him off the rota, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

He was jailed for criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise in 2008 but started training as a nurse when he was released in 2011. He began a work placement at the hospital last month, the paper said.

Benyettou was described as a “studious and discreet trainee” by colleagues who appeared to be unaware of his notorious past.

“it is impossible to imagine that this man – whom everyone says is one of the main mentors of the Kouachi brothers – might have tended to the victims of his former protégés,” a doctor at the hospital told Le Parisien.