On this date, January 9, 2015, the
perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are
both killed after a hostage situation. Elsewhere, a second hostage situation, related to the
Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market, Hypercacher,
in the eastern Paris suburb of Vincennes. I will post information about the Gunman from
ISIS, Amedy Coulibaly from Wikipedia.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedy_Coulibaly
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Amedy
Coulibaly
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Born
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27 February 1982
Juvisy-sur-Orge, Île-de-France, France |
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Died
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9 January 2015 (aged 32)
Paris, France |
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Cause of
death
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Gunshot wounds
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Resting
place
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In Muslim section of cemetery in Thiais, France
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Nationality
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French
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Other names
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Abou Bassir Abdallah al-Ifriqi
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Occupation
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Unemployed; previously Coca Cola worker
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Known for
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Height
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5 ft 5 in (165 cm)
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Religion
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Islam
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Criminal
charge
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Robbery, drug
trafficking, assisting plot to break out Islamist terrorist from prison
(December 2013)
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Criminal
penalty
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Five years in prison
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Criminal
status
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Convicted; Released early, in March 2014
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Spouse(s)
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Allegiance
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Capture status
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Killed
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Killings
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Date
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8–9 January 2015
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Location(s)
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Target(s)
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Killed
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5
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Injured
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11
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Weapons
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Amedy Coulibaly
(French
pronunciation: [amɛdi kulibali]; 27 February 1982 – 9 January 2015)
was the main suspect for the Montrouge
shooting, in which municipal
police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe was shot and killed, and was
the hostage-taker and gunman in the Porte de
Vincennes siege, in which he killed four hostages and was killed 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.
Coulibaly had pledged allegiance to the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant.
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. She has been described by newspapers as
"France's most wanted woman". She was last tracked on 10 January 2015
to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-controlled border town of Tell Abyad in Syria.
Early
life
Coulibaly
was born in Juvisy-sur-Orge, a suburb south-east of Paris, into a
Malian Muslim
immigrant family. He was the only boy, with nine sisters. He grew up on a
housing estate, La Grande Borne, in Grigny,
south of Paris.
Starting
at the age of 17, he was convicted five times for armed robbery and at least
once for drug trafficking. A report by a psychiatric expert prepared for a
Parisian court found Coulibaly had an "immature and psychopathic
personality" and "poor powers of introspection".
Activities
prior to 2015 shootings
In
2004, Coulibaly was sentenced to six years in Fleury-Mérogis Prison for armed bank robbery.
There, he met Chérif Kouachi. He is believed to have converted to radical
Islam at the same time as Chérif. 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.
After
release from prison he married Hayat Boumeddiene on 5 July 2009 in an Islamic religious ceremony. Boumeddiene's
father stood in for her at the marriage service. On 15 July 2009, while
involved in an effort promoting youth employment, Coulibaly, along with about
500 others, met with then-President Nicolas
Sarkozy.
A
source stated that Coulibaly "was friends of both of" the Kouachi
brothers, and he had first met Cherif in prison. 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. 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.
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. Coulibaly maintained that he was planning to sell the
ammunition on the street. 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),
a plot in which the Kouachi brothers were also involved. However, Coulibaly was
released early from Villepinte prison outside Paris, in
March 2014. He was required to wear an electronic bracelet until May 2014.
In
August 2014, Coulibaly and his wife approached a Jewish
school, and inquired if there were Jews inside. The security guard asked
them to leave.
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.
He
had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, as he put it, "as soon as the caliphate was
declared," which was in the summer of 2014. 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. Text in the video states that Coulibaly had killed a
policewoman and "five Jews." The video captions him with the names
"Amedy Coulibaly" and "Abou Bassir Abdallah al-Ifriqi". As
the video includes news reports of his attack on the kosher supermarket, it was
edited by someone after he was killed.
Shootings
on 7–9 January 2015
See
also: Porte de Vincennes siege and January 2015 Île-de-France attacks §
Fontenay-aux-Roses and Montrouge shootings
Coulibaly
is said to be responsible for three shootings, and he said he synchronized his
attacks with the Kouachi brothers. 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.
The
second shooting occurred in Montrouge on 8 January. Clarissa Jean-Philippe, an unarmed
French policewoman, was killed, and a street sweeper was critically injured.
DNA found at the scene was a match to Coulibay.
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. 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." French
commandos stormed the store, and killed Coulibaly. He left in his car maps
indicating the locations of Jewish schools in Paris.
Aftermath
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.
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. She has been
described by newspapers as "France's most wanted woman". She was last
tracked on 10 January 2015 to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-controlled
border town of Tell Abyad in Syria.
