Amedy Coulibaly | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | Juvisy-sur-Orge, Essonne, France | 27 February 1982
Died | 9 January 2015 Paris, France | (aged 32)
Cause of death | Ballistic trauma |
Resting place | In Muslim section of cemetery in Thiais, France[4] |
Nationality | French |
Other names | Abu Basir al-Ifriqi Abou Bassir Abdallah al-Ifriqi Doly Gringy[5] |
Occupation(s) | Unemployed; previously Coca-Cola worker[6] |
Known for | |
Criminal status | Convicted; Released early, in March 2014 |
Spouse | Hayat Boumeddiene |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Criminal charge | Robbery, drug trafficking, assisting plot to break out Islamist terrorist from prison (December 2013) |
Penalty | Five years in prison |
Capture status | Killed |
Partner(s) | Saïd and Chérif Kouachi |
Details | |
Date | 8–9 January 2015 |
Location(s) | |
Target(s) |
|
Killed | 5 |
Injured | 10 |
Weapons |
|
Amedy Coulibaly (French pronunciation: [amɛdi kulibali]; 27 February 1982 – 9 January 2015), also known by the nom de guerre (kunya) Abu Basir al-Ifriqi (Arabic: أبو بصير الإفريقي)[7] was a Malian-French man who was the prime suspect in the Montrouge shooting, in which municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe was shot and killed, and was the hostage-taker and gunman in the Hypercacher Kosher Supermarket siege, in which he killed four hostages before being fatally shot by police.
He was a close friend of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo shooting, to which Coulibaly's shootings were connected. He said he synchronized his attacks with the Kouachi brothers.[8][9] Coulibaly had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.[10]
Early life
[edit]![](Https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/GrandeBornePlaineCentrale.jpg/260px-GrandeBornePlaineCentrale.jpg)
Coulibaly was born in Juvisy-sur-Orge, a suburb south-east of Paris, into a Malian Muslim immigrant family.[11][12] He was the only boy, with nine sisters. He grew up on a housing estate, La Grande Borne, in Grigny, south of Paris.[13]
Starting at the age of 17, he was convicted five times for armed robbery and at least once for drug trafficking.[12][14] A report by a psychiatric expert prepared for a Parisian court found Coulibaly had an "immature and psychopathic personality" and "poor powers of introspection."[15]
Activities prior to 2015 shootings
[edit]In 2004, Coulibaly was sentenced to six years in Fleury-Mérogis Prison for armed bank robbery.[14] There, he met Chérif Kouachi. He is believed to have converted to radical Islam in prison at the same time as Chérif.[16] In prison he also met al-Qaeda recruiter Djamel Beghal, who was in "isolation" in the cell above him but whom he was nevertheless able to communicate with.[17] He later said that his discovery of Islam in prison changed him.[18]
In 2007, he met and began dating Hayat Boumeddiene. On 5 July 2009, they got married in an Islamic religious ceremony.[14][19][20] Boumeddiene's father stood in for her at the marriage service.[14] On 15 July 2009, while involved in an effort promoting youth employment, Coulibaly, along with about 500 others, met with then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.[21]
A source stated that Coulibaly "was friends of both of" the Kouachi brothers, and that he had first met Cherif in prison.[22][23] Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers were known members of the "Buttes-Chaumont network" . The name comes from the nearby Parc des Buttes Chaumont, where they often met and performed military-style training exercises with other French-Algerian extremists.[24][25][26] Coulibaly is believed to have been radicalised by an Islamic preacher in Paris, and had expressed a desire to fight in either Iraq or Syria.[27]
Ten months after his meeting with Sarkozy, in May 2010 police arrested him and searched his apartment. They found ammunition, a crossbow, and letters seeking false official documents.[14][28] Coulibaly maintained that he was planning to sell the ammunition on the street.[16] In December 2013 he was sentenced to five years in prison for supplying ammunition for a plot to break out from prison radical French-Algerian Islamist Smain Ait Ali Belkacem (who had planned the 1995 Paris Métro and RER bombings),[29][30][31] a plot in which the Kouachi brothers were also involved.[23] However, Coulibaly was released early from Villepinte prison outside Paris, in March 2014.[32][33][34] He was required to wear an electronic bracelet until May 2014.[30]
In October 2014, he and Boumeddiene went to perform the Hajj in Mecca, the pilgrimage obligatory for every Muslim who is able to do so.[14][19]
A week before the attacks, on 4 January 2015 Coulibaly rented a house in Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, in the southern Paris suburbs. There, after the attacks, police discovered automatic weapons, a grenade launcher, smoke grenades and bombs, handguns, industrial explosives, and flags of the Islamic State.[31][35][36]
He had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State, as he put it, "as soon as the caliphate was declared," which was in the summer of 2014.[31] He stated this, and described how he and the Kouachi brothers had synchronized their attacks and were "a team, in league together," in a video posted on Twitter days after he and the brothers were killed.[8][10][31][37][38][39] Text in the video states that Coulibaly had killed a policewoman and "five Jews."[39] The video captions him with the names "Amedy Coulibaly" and "Abou Bassir Abdallah al-Ifriqi."[8] As the video includes news reports of his attack on the kosher supermarket, it was edited by someone after he was killed.[40]
Shootings on 7–9 January 2015
[edit]Coulibaly said he synchronized his attacks with the Kouachi brothers.[8] In the shootings, five people were killed and eleven others were wounded.
The first shooting was of a jogger who was wounded on the evening of 7 January in Fontenay-aux-Roses. Shell casings found at the scene were later linked to the weapon carried by Coulibaly in his kosher supermarket attack.[8] However, the jogger refuted Coulibaly's involvement and recognized Amar Ramdani, a friend of Coulibaly, as the gunman.[41]
The second shooting occurred in Montrouge on 8 January. Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a policewoman, was killed, and a street sweeper was critically injured. DNA found at the scene was a match to Coulibaly.[4][8][42]
The third shooting took place at Porte de Vincennes, east Paris, on 9 January. Coulibaly killed four more people, all Jewish patrons at a Jewish Hypercacher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes, at the outset of an hours-long siege in which he demanded that the Kouachi brothers be freed.[3][9][38][43][44][45][46][47] At the outset of that attack, he introduced himself to his hostages, saying: "I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State."[48] French commandos stormed the store, and killed Coulibaly.[42] A Nagant M1895 revolver was also found in the possession of Coulibaly.[49]
Aftermath
[edit]After Mali refused to accept Coulibaly's body for burial, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Muslim section of a cemetery in Thiais.[4]
His wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, is currently being sought by French police as a suspected accomplice of Coulibaly, alleged to have helped him commit his attacks. She arrived in Turkey five days before the attacks.[50] She has been described by newspapers as "France's most wanted woman." She was last tracked on 10 January 2015 to the Islamic State-controlled border town of Tell Abyad in Syria. In early March 2019, Dorothee Maquere – wife of French jihadist Fabien Clain – claimed that Boumeddiene was killed during the Battle of Baghuz Fawqani due to injuries sustained from an airstrike on her safehouse.[51]
In March 2020, a French jihadist woman told a judge that she met Boumeddiene in October 2019 at the Al Howl camp; Boumeddiene was staying under a false identity and managed to escape.[52] French intelligence services think that this piece of information is plausible.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Duquet, Nils; Kbiltsetskhlashvili, Nino; Khan, Isthiaq & Woods, Eric (3 October 2019). Armed To Kill: A comprehensive analysis of the guns used in public mass shootings in Europe between 2009 and 2018 (PDF) (Report). Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute. ISBN 978-9-07886-497-4. Retrieved 22 July 2021.
- ^ Chazan, David (17 January 2015). "Charlie Hebdo attack: French police investigate whether there was a fourth Paris gunman". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ a b "Charlie Hebdo shooting: Amedy Coulibaly linked to attack on jogger after magazine massacre". ABC News. 11 January 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
- ^ a b c "Kosher deli Islamist Amedy Coulibaly is buried in the Muslim section of Paris cemetery". Colorado Newsday. 23 January 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
- ^ "France: Raids kill 3 suspects, including 2 wanted in Charlie Hebdo attack". CNN. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 18 July 2022 – via CBS 58.
- ^ "Charlie Hebdo Paris: Hayat Boumeddiene on the run after hostage siege and shootings in kosher grocery store". News.com.au. 10 January 2015. Archived from the original on 31 March 2015.
- ^ "Dabiq Magazine Issue 7 - From Hypocrisy to Apostasy" (PDF). Clarion Project. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f Gauthier-Villars, David; Fitch, Asa; Abdulrahim, Raja (12 January 2015). "Islamic State Releases Video Calling Grocery Store Gunman Its 'Soldier'". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ a b "Le suspect de Montrouge, Amedy Coulibaly, était bien le tireur de Vincennes" [The suspect of Montrouge, Amedy Coulibaly, was indeed the shooter of Vincennes]. Le Monde (in French). 9 January 2015.
- ^ a b Onyanga-Omara, Jane (11 January 2015). "Video shows Paris gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State". USA Today.
- ^ "Attentats: la mère et les soeurs de Coulibaly "condamnent ces actes odieux"" [Attacks: Coulibaly's mother and sisters "condemn these heinous acts"]. Le Parisien (in French). 11 January 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
- ^ a b "Europe on Alert for Terror Attacks". CNN. 17 January 2015.
- ^ Chrisafis, Angelique (12 January 2015). "Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris". The Guardian.
- ^ a b c d e f Meichtry, Stacy; Bisserbe, Noémie & Faucon, Benoît (14 January 2015). "Paris Attacker Amedy Coulibaly's Path to Terror". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "Amedy Coulibaly, Paris Kosher Market Terrorist, Had History of Ties To Violence". The Huffington Post. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
- ^ a b "Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly met former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, years before Paris murder spree". Daily News. New York. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
- ^ Burgis, Tom (27 January 2015). "The making of a French jihadi". MTV Lebanon. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
- ^ Bisserbe, Noémie (31 July 2016). "European Prisons Fueling Spread of Islamic Radicalism". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
'Prison changed me,' Coulibaly would later tell French journalist Warda Mohamed after his release in 2008. Ms. Mohamed, a French journalist who interviewed Coulibaly as part of a documentary on prison life, said she didn't publish the comments at the time. 'I learnt about Islam in prison. Before that I wasn't interested, now I pray,' Coulibaly told Ms. Mohamed, she said.
- ^ a b Labrouillère, François & Raya, Aurélie (30 January 2015). "Hayat Boumeddiene et Amedy Coulibaly – Le destin monstrueux d'un couple ordinaire" [Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly - The monstrous fate of an ordinary couple]. Paris Match (in French).
- ^ "France – Manhunt on for female accomplice in French attacks". France 24. 12 January 2015.
- ^ "Paris Attacker Met French President in 2009". Time. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
- ^ "The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly: comrades in terrorism". Dpa International. 9 January 2015. Archived from the original on 10 January 2015.
- ^ a b "Charlie Hebdo attack: Hayat Boumeddiene may be in Syria; Common law wife of supermarket attacker is believed have passed through Turkey on Jan. 2". CBC News. 10 January 2015.
- ^ Witte, Griff; Faiola, Anthony (8 January 2015). "Suspect in Paris attack had 'long-term obsession' carrying out terror attack". The Washington Post.
- ^ Samuel, Henry & Sawer, Patrick (8 January 2015). "Charlie Hebdo attack: the Kouachi brothers and the network of French Islamists with links to Islamic State". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ "'Buttes Chaumont' network behind Paris attacks". Channel 4. 9 January 2015.
- ^ Harris, Sarah Ann (9 January 2015). "Shooting of Paris police officer LINKED to Charlie Hebdo massacre". Daily Express.
- ^ "Hunt For Terrorist's Wife As More Attacks Feared". MSN. 10 January 2015. Archived from the original on 2 October 2015.
- ^ Farmer, Ben & Walton, Gregory (12 January 2015). "Hayat Boumeddiene Interviewed By Police In 2010". Business Insider.
- ^ a b Weitzmann, Marc (23 January 2015). "Paris Kosher Supermarket Gunman Amedy Coulibaly Caught on Tape Casing Jewish School in August". Tablet.
- ^ a b c d Callimachi, Rukmini & Higgins, Andrew (11 January 2015). "Video Shows a Paris Gunman Declaring His Loyalty to the Islamic State". The New York Times.
- ^ Bisserbe, Noémie; Faucon, Benoît & Meichtry, Stacy (30 January 2015). "Underground Terror Network Said to Benefit Would-Be Jihadists in Europe". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "Who Is Amedy Coulibaly? Paris Kosher Deli Gunman Once Worked For Coca-Cola, Was Close With Kouachi Brothers". International Business Times. 9 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
- ^ Callimachi, Rukmini; Yardley, Jim (17 January 2015). "Chérif and Saïd Kouachi's Path to Paris Attack at Charlie Hebdo". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
- ^ "Paris attacks: Investigators turn up new leads". BBC News. 19 January 2015.
- ^ Dahlburg, John-Thor (19 January 2015). "Paris gunman's safe house could hold clues to 4th attacker". Fox 12 Oregon. Archived from the original on 20 January 2015.
- ^ "4 Men in Paris Court Are 1st To Face Terror Attacks Charges". The Huffington Post. 20 January 2015. Archived from the original on 24 January 2015.
- ^ a b Withnall, Adam (11 January 2015). "Amedy Coulibaly Isis video: Footage shows Paris supermarket gunman pledging allegiance to 'Islamic State'". The Independent. Archived from the original on 11 January 2015.
- ^ a b Samuel, Henry (11 January 2015). "Jihadi video of Amedy Coulibaly emerges from beyond the grave". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ Malik, Shiv (11 January 2015). "Paris supermarket attacker claims allegiance to Islamic State in video". The Guardian.
- ^ "Pour moi, ce n'était pas Amédy Coulibaly qui m'a tiré dessus" [For me, it wasn't Amédy Coulibaly who shot me]. Paris Match (in French). 4 January 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
- ^ a b Dassanayake, Dion (10 January 2015). "Jewish supermarket siege: Heroic hostage executed after trying to turn weapon on gunman". Daily Express.
- ^ "France's most wanted woman may have traveled to Syria, reports say". Fox News. Archived from the original on 13 January 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2015.
- ^ "Charlie Hebdo attack: Manhunt – live reporting". BBC News. 9 January 2015.
- ^ "Paris shooting updates / Charlie Hebdo attackers take hostage after car chase". Haaretz. 9 January 2015.
- ^ Cazi, Emeline (11 January 2014). "Ce que l'on sait de l'agression d'un joggeur à Fontenay-aux-Roses" [What we know about the assault of a jogger in Fontenay-aux-Roses]. Le Monde (in French).
- ^ "Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis". The Guardian. 11 January 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
- ^ Mendick, Robert; Harley, Nicola & Alexander, Harriet (10 January 2015). "Amid the terror, a hero who lost his life by fighting back". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ "Hoe een antieke revolver in handen kwam van criminelen en terroristen" [How an antique revolver got into the hands of criminals and terrorists]. NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). 13 January 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2017.
- ^ "Islamic State magazine interviews Hayat Boumeddiene". The Guardian. 12 February 2015. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
- ^ El Deeb, Sarah (4 March 2019). "Prominent French jihadis killed in IS-held area in Syria". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
- ^ "Hayat Boumeddiene vivante? Une enquête ouverte après qu'une jihadiste affirme l'avoir croisée dans un camp en Syrie" [Hayat Boumeddiene alive? An investigation opened after a jihadist claims to have met her in a camp in Syria]. France 2 (in French). 14 May 2020.