– AMEDY COULIBALY

Published February 23, 2015

Amedy Coulibaly, of Senegalese descent and the only son among ten siblings, was born in 02/1982, in a suburb of Paris, He had a history of violence dating back to his youth. He was convicted for a charge committed when he was 17, serving a sentence in 2001 for armed robbery and drug trafficking.

Amedy Coulibaly served time in detention together at Fleury-Mérogis Prison south of Paris, where he got acquainted to Cherif Kouachi. He converted to Islam during that time, and began radicalizing shortly after.

When Amedy Coulibaly was released from prison in 2006, he started working at a Coca Cola factory near Paris. According to the British newspaper Telegraph, Amedy Coulibaly, a resident of Juvisy in the Essonne area outside Paris, was part of the Buttes-Chaumont network – named after a park in the 19th arrondissement – which recruited Islamic youth to fight in Iraq in the early 2000s. Said and Cherif Kouachi – the Paris Terror Rampage murderers – were also part of the radical network. Both Coulibaly and the Kouachi Brothers were devoted followers of Djamel Beghal .

Three years later, in 07/2009, he was selected to meet then president Nicholas Sarkozy with a group of 500 other youth.

Amedy Coulibaly met Sarkozy and even asked for an autograph for his nine sisters. He was quoted in le Parisien saying he was excited to meet the president but that he was not very popular with the urban youth.

Also in 2009 Amedy Coulibaly and his girlfriend, 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, met with DחDjamal Beghal in southern France, where he had been service a house-arrest sentence, according to reports. Eventually Djamal Beghal arranged an Islamic marriage ceremony for him and hayat Bomeddiene. That same year, French intelligence services documented Djamal Beghal playing soccer with Cherif Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists.

Ten months after he met with President Sarkozy Amedy Coulibaly was arrested again in 2010 on the suspicion that he was behind an attempt to break out Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, one of the men responsible for the 1995 train bombing in Paris, out of jail. The Kouachi brothers were also arrested over the attempted jail break, but were released due to a dearth of evidence.

A search of Coulibaly’s house yielded Kalashnikov ammunition. He was placed under arrest, sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and released early by the end of 2012.

Amedy Coulibaly travelled to Spain on 12/31/2014 by car with another man who has not yet been identified. Then, they joined Hayat Boumeddiene in Madrid and remained in the capital until 01/02/2015..

On 01/08/2015, the day of the Charlie Hebdo Attack Amedy Coulibaly was also involved in the shooting of a jogger near Paris but the French police did not connect in real time the events.

On Thursday 01/08/2015, coordinated with the Charlie Hebdo Attack, at about 08:30 Amedy Coulibaly, using his partner, Hayat Boumeddien’s car, shot and killed a police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 27, who was unarmed and directing traffic in Montrouge, in south Paris and injuring a nearby street sweeper.

On Friday 01/09/2015, at about 12:15, Amedy Coulibaly reappeared and took several people hostage at a Hyper-Kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Heavily-armed police arrive and surround the store. In negotiation with the police Amedy Coulibaly asked the immediate removal of the siege in Dammartin-en-Goele on the Kouachi Brothers, linking the two events together.

During the several hours the Kouachi brothers were cornered in a town outside Paris and Coulibaly held hostages in the kosher market, TV network BFM managed to speak with Amedy Coulibaly. Cherif Kouachi said he had been sent by “Al-Qaeda in Yemen” while Amedy Coulibali claimed he had been sent by the Islamic State – I.S.I.S and had coordinated with the Kouachi brothers.

Amedy Coulibaly and 4 hostages, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, Yoav Hattab and Francois-Michel Saadaת all Jews. were killed, on Friday 01/09/2015 at about 17:00, in the exchange of fire between Amedy Coulibaly and police, when police stormed the Paris kosher grocery store.

Amedy Coulibaly wore a GoPro video camera and recorded 7 minutes of his deeds including when he killed three of the hostages.He then had one hostage help him access another computer in the market where he appeared to be manipulating video or image files. Investigators believe he emailed a copy of the video to someone.