Amedy Coulibaly Explained

Amedy Coulibaly
Birth Date:1982 2, df=y
Birth Place:Juvisy-sur-Orge, Essonne, France
Death Place:Paris, France
Death Cause:Ballistic trauma
Resting Place:In Muslim section of cemetery in Thiais, France[1]
Nationality:French
Other Names:Abu Basir al-Ifriqi
Abou Bassir Abdallah al-Ifriqi
Doly Gringy[2]
Occupation:Unemployed; previously Coca-Cola worker[3]
Known For:
Criminal Charge:Robbery, drug trafficking, assisting plot to break out Islamist terrorist from prison (December 2013)
Conviction Status:Convicted; Released early, in March 2014
Spouse:Hayat Boumeddiene
Capture Status:Killed
Partners:Saïd and Chérif Kouachi
Date:8–9 January 2015
Locations:
Targets:
  • Patrons of kosher supermarket
  • Police officer
Fatalities:5
Injuries:10
Weapons:
Conviction Penalty:Five years in prison

Amedy Coulibaly (in French pronounced as /amɛdi kulibali/; 27 February 1982 – 9 January 2015), also known by the nom de guerre (kunya) Abu Basir al-Ifriqi [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

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

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 . 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

See also: Hypercacher Kosher Supermarket siege. 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.[1] [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.[6] [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

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.[1]

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

References

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Kosher deli Islamist Amedy Coulibaly is buried in the Muslim section of Paris cemetery . 23 January 2015 . Colorado Newsday . 1 October 2015 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150128112143/http://www.coloradonewsday.com/news/regional/92521-kosher-deli-islamist-amedy-coulibaly-is-buried-in-the-muslim-section-of-paris-cemetery.html . 28 January 2015.
  2. News: France: Raids kill 3 suspects, including 2 wanted in Charlie Hebdo attack . 18 July 2022 . . 9 January 2015 . en . CBS 58.
  3. News: Charlie Hebdo Paris: Hayat Boumeddiene on the run after hostage siege and shootings in kosher grocery store . January 10, 2015 . News.com.au . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150331120531/http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/charlie-hebdo-paris-hayat-boumeddiene-on-the-run-after-hostage-siege-and-shootings-in-kosher-grocery-store/story-e6frfkui-1227180329412 . March 31, 2015.
  4. Armed To Kill: A comprehensive analysis of the guns used in public mass shootings in Europe between 2009 and 2018 . Nils . Duquet . Nino . Kbiltsetskhlashvili . Isthiaq . Khan . Eric . Woods . amp . Flemish Peace Institute . Brussels . 3 October 2019 . 978-9-07886-497-4 . 22 July 2021.
  5. News: Charlie Hebdo attack: French police investigate whether there was a fourth Paris gunman . David . Chazan . 17 January 2015 . The Daily Telegraph.
  6. Web site: Charlie Hebdo shooting: Amedy Coulibaly linked to attack on jogger after magazine massacre . 11 January 2015 . . 13 January 2015.
  7. News: Dabiq Magazine Issue 7 - From Hypocrisy to Apostasy. Clarion Project. 27 April 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20150219112309/http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-state-dabiq-magazine-issue-7-from-hypocrisy-to-apostasy.pdf. 19 February 2015. dead.
  8. News: Islamic State Releases Video Calling Grocery Store Gunman Its 'Soldier' . David . Gauthier-Villars . Asa . Fitch . Raja . Abdulrahim . 12 January 2015 . The Wall Street Journal.
  9. News: Le suspect de Montrouge, Amedy Coulibaly, était bien le tireur de Vincennes . The suspect of Montrouge, Amedy Coulibaly, was indeed the shooter of Vincennes . . 9 January 2015 . . fr.
  10. News: Video shows Paris gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State . Jane . Onyanga-Omara . 11 January 2015 . USA Today.
  11. News: Attentats: la mère et les soeurs de Coulibaly "condamnent ces actes odieux" . Attacks: Coulibaly's mother and sisters "condemn these heinous acts" . . 11 January 2015 . 13 January 2015 . fr.
  12. Web site: Europe on Alert for Terror Attacks . 17 January 2015 . CNN.
  13. News: Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris . Angelique . Chrisafis . 12 January 2015 . The Guardian.
  14. News: Paris Attacker Amedy Coulibaly's Path to Terror . Stacy . Meichtry . Noémie . Bisserbe . Benoît . Faucon . amp . 14 January 2015 . The Wall Street Journal.
  15. Web site: Amedy Coulibaly, Paris Kosher Market Terrorist, Had History of Ties To Violence . 9 January 2015 . . 9 January 2015.
  16. News: . New York . Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly met former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, years before Paris murder spree . 9 January 2015 . 9 January 2015.
  17. Web site: The making of a French jihadi . Tom . Burgis . 27 January 2015 . MTV Lebanon . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304191349/https://mtv.com.lb/en/News/439798 . March 4, 2016.
  18. News: Noémie . Bisserbe . European Prisons Fueling Spread of Islamic Radicalism . 1 August 2016 . The Wall Street Journal . 31 July 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..
  19. Web site: Hayat Boumeddiene et Amedy Coulibaly – Le destin monstrueux d'un couple ordinaire . Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly - The monstrous fate of an ordinary couple . François . Labrouillère . Aurélie . Raya . amp . 30 January 2015 . . fr.
  20. Web site: France – Manhunt on for female accomplice in French attacks . France 24 . 12 January 2015.
  21. Paris Attacker Met French President in 2009 . 9 January 2015 . . 9 January 2015.
  22. Web site: The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly: comrades in terrorism . . 9 January 2015 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150110022859/http://www.dpa-international.com/news/international/updateprofilethe-kouachi-brothers-and-amedy-coulibaly-comrades-in-terrorism-a-43827912.html . 10 January 2015.
  23. Web site: Charlie Hebdo attack: Hayat Boumeddiene may be in Syria; Common law wife of supermarket attacker is believed have passed through Turkey on Jan. 2 . 10 January 2015 . CBC News.
  24. News: Suspect in Paris attack had 'long-term obsession' carrying out terror attack . Witte . Griff . Faiola . Anthony . 8 January 2015 . The Washington Post.
  25. News: Charlie Hebdo attack: the Kouachi brothers and the network of French Islamists with links to Islamic State . Henry . Samuel . Patrick . Sawer . amp . 8 January 2015 . The Daily Telegraph.
  26. Web site: 'Buttes Chaumont' network behind Paris attacks . Channel 4 . 9 January 2015.
  27. News: Shooting of Paris police officer LINKED to Charlie Hebdo massacre . Sarah Ann . Harris . Daily Express . 9 January 2015.
  28. Web site: Hunt For Terrorist's Wife As More Attacks Feared . 10 January 2015 . MSN . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20151002225055/https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/national/hunt-for-terrorists-wife-as-more-attacks-feared/ar-AA7Zdkj . 2 October 2015.
  29. Web site: Hayat Boumeddiene Interviewed By Police In 2010 . Ben . Farmer . Gregory . Walton . amp . 12 January 2015 . Business Insider.
  30. Web site: Paris Kosher Supermarket Gunman Amedy Coulibaly Caught on Tape Casing Jewish School in August . Marc . Weitzmann . . 23 January 2015.
  31. News: Video Shows a Paris Gunman Declaring His Loyalty to the Islamic State . Rukmini . Callimachi . Andrew . Higgins . amp . 11 January 2015 . The New York Times.
  32. News: Underground Terror Network Said to Benefit Would-Be Jihadists in Europe . Noémie . Bisserbe . Benoît . Faucon . Stacy . Meichtry . amp . 30 January 2015 . The Wall Street Journal.
  33. Web site: Who Is Amedy Coulibaly? Paris Kosher Deli Gunman Once Worked For Coca-Cola, Was Close With Kouachi Brothers . 9 January 2015 . . 9 January 2015.
  34. News: Callimachi . Rukmini . Yardley . Jim . 17 January 2015 . Chérif and Saïd Kouachi's Path to Paris Attack at Charlie Hebdo . The New York Times . 20 January 2015.
  35. Web site: Paris attacks: Investigators turn up new leads . BBC News . 19 January 2015.
  36. Web site: Paris gunman's safe house could hold clues to 4th attacker . John-Thor . Dahlburg . 19 January 2015 . Fox 12 Oregon . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150120134326/http://www.kptv.com/story/27852855/paris-gunmans-safe-house-could-hold-clues-to-4th-attacker . 20 January 2015.
  37. Web site: 4 Men in Paris Court Are 1st To Face Terror Attacks Charges . 20 January 2015 . The Huffington Post . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150124020650/https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/paris-attack-suspects_n_6511996.html . 24 January 2015.
  38. Web site: Amedy Coulibaly Isis video: Footage shows Paris supermarket gunman pledging allegiance to 'Islamic State' . Adam . Withnall . 11 January 2015 . The Independent . https://web.archive.org/web/20150111194857/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ahmed-coulibaly-isis-video-footage-shows-paris-supermarket-gunman-pledging-allegiance-to-islamic-state-9970600.html . dead . 11 January 2015.
  39. News: Jihadi video of Amedy Coulibaly emerges from beyond the grave . Henry . Samuel . 11 January 2015 . The Daily Telegraph.
  40. News: Paris supermarket attacker claims allegiance to Islamic State in video . Shiv . Malik . The Guardian . 11 January 2015.
  41. Web site: Pour moi, ce n'était pas Amédy Coulibaly qui m'a tiré dessus . For me, it wasn't Amédy Coulibaly who shot me . fr . 4 January 2016 . Paris Match . 4 January 2016.
  42. News: Jewish supermarket siege: Heroic hostage executed after trying to turn weapon on gunman . Dion . Dassanayake . Daily Express . 10 January 2015 .
  43. Web site: France's most wanted woman may have traveled to Syria, reports say . Fox News . 17 January 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150113072916/http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/11/french-authorities-hunt-most-wanted-woman-in-france-fears-new-terror-attack/ . 13 January 2015 . dead.
  44. Web site: Charlie Hebdo attack: Manhunt – live reporting . BBC News . 9 January 2015.
  45. News: Paris shooting updates / Charlie Hebdo attackers take hostage after car chase . 9 January 2015 . Haaretz.
  46. News: 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 . Emeline . Cazi . 11 January 2014 . fr.
  47. News: Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis . 11 January 2015 . . 13 January 2015.
  48. News: Amid the terror, a hero who lost his life by fighting back . Robert . Mendick . Nicola . Harley . Harriet . Alexander . amp . 10 January 2015 . The Daily Telegraph.
  49. News: Hoe een antieke revolver in handen kwam van criminelen en terroristen . How an antique revolver got into the hands of criminals and terrorists . nl . 2017-01-13 . . 2017-01-15.
  50. News: Islamic State magazine interviews Hayat Boumeddiene . The Guardian . 12 February 2015 . 15 November 2015.
  51. News: Prominent French jihadis killed in IS-held area in Syria . El Deeb . Sarah . 4 March 2019 . The Washington Post . 4 March 2019.
  52. Web site: 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 . fr . 14 May 2020 . France 2.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Amedy Coulibaly".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.