France Info radio says the Turkish authorities informed France she had travelled to Turkey on January 2. She is believed to have crossed over into Syria on January 8.
Pictures released yesterday show Boumeddiene in 2010, presumably some time after the beach photo. The bikini is gone, replaced by a full body veil. Kneeling in a forest, she holds a crossbow and in one photo aims it at the camera.
The pictures are believed to have been taken while the couple visited Djamel Beghal, a former British-based al-Qaeda linchpin.
Boumeddiene was born in 1988 into an Algerian family of seven in Villiers-sur-Marne. As a teenager she reportedly altered her surname to "make it sound more French". But while working as a cashier she met Coulibaly - a long-time criminal who became a radical Muslim in prison.
Her new partner was the only boy in a family of 10 in Essonne, Ile-de-France. He first came to police notice as a 17-year-old delinquent. Cconvictions for theft, drugs and armed robbery followed.
Amedy Coulibaly. Photo / AP
Later, he had a temporary job at a Coca-Cola factory and reportedly met President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009. By then, Boumeddiene was becoming increasingly radical. She insisted on wearing the top-to-toe Islamic niqab, which cost her her cashier's job.
In July that year they married in a religious ceremony not recognised by the state, and lived in a modest flat in Bagneux, a poor suburb of Paris. After his latest stint behind bars, Coulibaly moved back in with her last May.
They were known as devoutly religious. Neighbours have said they were quiet, respectful and "normal", and had even gone on a holiday to Malaysia together. But last month, without warning, they disappeared. The next time neighbours saw them was when their pictures were flashed around the world.
About a year ago, just before she went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Boumeddiene became reconciled with her father. Yesterday he was being questioned by police, and a friend said he was in shock.
It has emerged that she and her husband were in regular contact with radical militants, including Cherif and Said Kouachi, for years. Both wives of the dead brothers were arrested yesterday, as investigators tried to piece together where Boumeddiene might be hiding. Le Parisien reported she had regular phone contact with Cherif's wife, Izzana Hamyd. Records show they spoke over 500 times in 2014.
Boumeddiene never made a secret of her fanatical views.
Interviewed in 2010 by counterterrorism officers over Coulibaly's involvement in a bid to free Paris bomber Smain Ait Ali Belkacem from jail, she refused to condemn al-Qaeda.
When told the authorities knew she and Coulibaly had visited Djamel Beghal at the same time as Cherif Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists, she replied: "We went there for crossbow practice."
Police are now investigating if Coulibaly was also behind a gun attack on Thursday that left a jogger critically injured. The assault was on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre, near where Coulibaly and Boumeddiene lived.
Cherif and Said Kouachi
Cherif and Said Kouachi. Photo / AP
Their faces were unknown to the French public before the terrorist attack in Paris, but to the French police, Cherif and Said Kouachi were well known.
It must have been with despair that the authorities realised that the men they once watched so closely had been allowed to drop off their radar, slip away and plot their attacks.
Both brothers were being watched intently as long ago as 2009, according to Le Parisien. Yet French authorities stopped the surveillance in July because they were deemed to be of low risk.
Police released long-lens surveillance images taken of Cherif by his car in his home district of Gennevilliers on April 7, 2010, and three days later they trailed him to Murat, in the Cantal region. He was shown shopping with Djamel Beghal - a jihadist with links to Finsbury Park mosque in London - and was also photographed training under Beghal's supervision.
By 2011 Said was also under suspicion for his links with Al Qaeda. For a while, the police surveillance was intense. But it stopped six months ago.
-Telegraph Group Ltd
