Amedy Coulibaly, the Islamist gunman who allegedly killed four people and held others hostage before he was killed by French security forces at a kosher store in Paris on Friday, reportedly told a French journalist at the height of the siege that he had deliberately chosen to target Jews.
“He explained his target, why this kosher store: because he was targeting Jews,” French BFM-TV journalist Sarah-Lou Cohen said.
She said Coulibaly called the TV station soon after 3p.m. Paris time. “We got a phone call” from Coulibaly, Cohen said. “He called us because in fact he was looking to contact the police.”
“He claimed to be part of the Islamic State very clearly,” Cohen said, according to a report on Vox.com. “He said he had instructions from the caliphate. And then another very important element, evidently, as we were saying in the afternoon, he established a link with the Kouachi brothers” — the gunmen who killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine on Wednesday.
Coulibaly spoke to BFM journalist Alexis Delahousse, she said, and told him that he and the Kouachi brothers had planned their attacks together.
“He explained also why he did this: to defend oppressed Muslims, he said, notably in Palestine,” Cohen continued. “And finally he explained his target, why this kosher store: because he was targeting Jews.”
Four Jewish men were killed Friday in a terror attack on a Paris kosher supermarket. They were named on Saturday afternoon. Fifteen hostages were freed when French security forces stormed the market on Friday afternoon and killed the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, a self-declared Islamic State member. His wife-accomplice escaped amid the chaos
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A muslim employee of the kosher market in Paris, where Amedy Coulibaly killed four people and held others hostage, helped hide several people and baby in a freezer downstairs as the seven-hour siege began.
Lassana Bathily, 24, tells Metronews, that his knowledge of the store and a cool head helped him act quickly to lead a number of people downstairs and conceal them from the gunman.
It is not clear how many people hid in the freezer, with some reports saying six people and other saying over a dozen.
“I opened the door of the freezer and a number of people went inside, I turned off the lights and the freezer,” he tells the newspaper.
Bathily says he told the shoppers to stay calm, closed the door and managed to flee the store using an elevator. He was then able to tell security forces about the people hiding in the freezer.
Giving a terrifying account, Mickael said: ‘I was heading for the check-out with the goods in my hand when I heard a bang – very loud. I thought it was a firecracker at first. But turning I saw a black man armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and I knew what was happening.’
‘I grabbed my son by the collar and fled to the back of the store. There, with other customers, we ran down a spiral staircase into the basement. We all piled into one of two cold rooms – our door wouldn’t close. We were terrified.
‘Five minutes later a store employee was sent down by the killer. She said he said we were to go back up otherwise there’d be carnage. I refused to go up.
‘By now my son, understanding nothing, was panicking. Then minutes later the employee comes back down with the same message. This time I decided to follow her up the spiral staircase.
‘At the top a man was dying in a pool of his own blood. The terrorist introduced himself to us. He was strangely calm. "I am Amedi Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State," he told us.'
‘Then he told us to put our phones on the ground. He walked around the store, armed, totally justifying himself, speaking of Palestine, French prisons, his brothers in Syria and many other things.
‘Suddenly one of the customers tried to grab one of his guns which he’d left on the counter. It wasn’t working. The terrorist had put it there because it had blocked after the first shots,' Mickael told Le Point.
‘He turned and shot at the customer who died on the spot.'
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