Djamel Beghal: what Wikipedia removed
Djamel Beghal is an Algerian convicted terrorist who, according to the 2015 opening, mentored fellow prisoners Chérif Kouachi of the Charlie Hebdo shooting and Amedy Coulibaly, who carried out the Fontenay-aux-Roses shooting and the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis. Today the opening covers his 2001 arrest and torture allegations but says nothing about mentoring the men behind the January 2015 Paris attacks, and the word hostage is gone from the article entirely. A reader today does not learn that Beghal mentored the gunmen behind the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis.
The word “hostage” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2015. Today it appears nowhere in the article at all, references included. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hostage | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| terror | 0 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
| islamist | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| jihad | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- This description was reworded to ‘an Algerian convicted terrorist’ in today’s opening.
- The statement that he was tortured was reframed as an unsubstantiated claim made by the advocacy group CAGE.
- The account of his extradition and retraction was reworded but the substance survives in the article.
- The statement that he began serving a 10-year sentence was dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 16246372):
Djamel Beghal (also transliterated as Jamel Beghal and Djamel Begal ) is a French Algerian and alleged Al-Qaida member. Beghal had once lived in London and attended the Finsbury Park mosque along with Richard Reid , Zacarias Moussaoui , Nizar Trabelsi , the Courtailler brothers, and other Al-Qaida suspects. Beghal allegedly planned the Paris Embassy plot and recruited people for Al-Qaida. Beghal was clean-shaven and was dressed in western clothing to attract almost no attention. In 28 July 2001 , he was arrested at Dubai International Airport while transferring from a flight from Pakistan to a flight to Europe. Beghal confessed to UAE authorities that he was conspiring to destroy the U.S. em…
2025 (revision 1293398140):
Algerian terrorist convict (born 1965) Djamel Beghal (also transliterated as Jamel Beghal and Djemal Begal ) ( Arabic : جمال بغال ; born 2 December 1965) is an Algerian convicted terrorist. He is a former French citizen. He married Sylvie, a French citizen, in 1990, while working as a youth worker in Corbeil-Essonnes . In 1997, he moved his family to Leicester , where Sylvie still lives with their four children. On 28 July 2001, he was arrested at Dubai International Airport while transferring from a flight from Pakistan to a flight to Europe; he held a fake French passport. Over the next two months, he was interrogated by the Emirati police. CAGE, a London-based Islamic activist organizatio…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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