Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label Hayat Boumeddiene. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hayat Boumeddiene. Show all posts

Monday, January 12, 2015

Paris suspect Hayat Boumeddiene 'caught on Turkey CCTV'


by Natalie de Vallieres and Biodun Iginla, BBC Newsbeat Online

The supermarket attacker's partner was caught on CCTV at an Istanbul airport
Newly-released CCTV footage appears to show the partner of Paris supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly arriving at an Istanbul airport in Turkey.
The video purports to show Hayat Boumeddiene passing through passport control with another man on 2 January. She is thought to now be in Syria.
French police are seeking her after Coulibaly and two other gunmen launched deadly attacks on Paris last week.
About 10,000 troops have been deployed in France following the attacks.
Hayat Boumeddiene has been identified as a suspect by French police, although she left France before the attacks.
The Turkish foreign minister said she arrived in Turkey on 2 January from Madrid, before continuing to Syria six days later.
The security footage, published by Haberturk newspaper, was released by Turkish police. It appeared to show Hayat Boumeddiene and a man at Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul.
Turkish officials told the BBC the man was Mehdi Sabri Belhouchine, a man of North African origin, and that he was not on a watch list. Officials believe he crossed into Syria with Hayat Boumeddiene.
This combination of images released on January 9, 2015 by the French police shows Hayat Boumeddiene (L) and Amedy Coulibaly (R) French police had named Hayat Boumeddiene (L) and Amedy Coulibaly (R) as suspects after a policewoman was shot on Thursday
Hayat Boumeddiene's partner, Coulibaly, had killed four people at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday before police stormed the building. He is also believed to have shot dead a policewoman the day before.
Coulibaly had claimed that he co-ordinated his attack with brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 12 people. All three gunmen were shot dead on Friday after police ended two separate sieges.
French prosecutors said Hayat Boumeddiene had exchanged more than 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014.
French police said they had also found a second flat in Paris which had been used as a hide-out by Coulibaly, and contained weapons.
'Not Turkey's fault' Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday that Turkey had not been asked to deny Hayat Boumeddiene access.
"We need to receive intelligence first so we can track people. We have 7,000 people on a no-entry list and deported 2,000, including French and German citizens."
He added: "Is it Turkey's fault that it has borders with Syria?"
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Boumeddiene's route
2 Jan: Flew from Madrid to Istanbul, accompanied by French citizen Mehdi Sabry Belhoucine. The pair attracted the suspicions of Turkish authorities, who put them under surveillance. They stayed at a hotel in the city for two days, where Boumeddiene is reported to have bought a mobile phone and SIM card
4 Jan: Domestic flight to Sanliurfa near Syrian border. She is reported to have made a number of calls to France from Turkey. The pair did not use their return tickets to Madrid, dated 9 January
8 Jan: Crossed into Syria. On the same day, her partner Amedy Coulibaly shoots dead a policewoman, using Boumeddiene's car in the attack. The French authorities announce they are looking for her
10 Jan: Last recorded phone call, reportedly from the Syrian town of Tel Abyad - not far from the border
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On Monday, France said it would deploy 10,000 troops to sensitive areas to boost security following the attacks.
French defence minister: "The mobilisation started this morning"
It is the first time troops have been deployed within France on such a scale.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the deployment, the first of its kind, was needed because "threats remain present".
Interior Minister Bernard Cazaneuve announced that nearly 5,000 members of the security forces would be sent to protect France's 717 Jewish schools.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said synagogues would also be protected, as would mosques, following some retaliatory attacks over the Charlie Hebdo killings.
There had been more than 20 attacks on Islamic buildings and 30 threats against Muslims since Wednesday, a spokesman for the Central Council of Muslims in France said.
Chris Bockman said security was tight at a Jewish school in Toulouse which was the scene of a fatal attack in 2012
The four Jewish victims of the supermarket attack will buried at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
On Sunday, an estimated 3.7 million people took to the streets to show solidarity with the victims, including 1.5 million people in Paris.
About 40 world leaders joined the start of the Paris march, linking arms in an act of solidarity.
Last week, Mr Valls admitted there had been "clear failings" after it emerged that the three gunman involved in the attacks had a history of extremism.
The Kouachi brothers were on UK and US terror watch lists and Coulibaly had previously been convicted for plotting to free a known militant from prison. Coulibaly met Cherif Kouachi while in jail.
Police patrol in the Marais, a historic Jewish quarter in central Paris, 12 January 2015 Armed police patrolled on Monday in the Marais, a historic Jewish neighbourhood in central Paris
Statue in Place de la Republique, Paris, 12 January 2015 After the huge marches, a statue in Place de la Republique was left holding a giant "I am Charlie" pencil
Members of the Zaka emergency response team pray beside the coffins of four victims of an attack at a kosher supermarket on Friday, before their transport from Paris to Israel for burial, 12 January 2015 The four men killed in Friday's supermarket attack will be buried in Jerusalem on Tuesday
Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks on 7 January, witnesses said they heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar").
On Monday, the magazine's lawyer said that the latest edition of the magazine, put together by surviving staff, would feature caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, along with other figures.
The magazine would "cede nothing" to extremists, Richard Malka told French radio.
It will have a print run of one million copies, compared with its usual 60,000 a week.
The satirical weekly has courted controversy in the past with its irreverent take on news and current affairs. It was firebombed in November 2011 a day after it carried a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.

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Saturday, January 10, 2015

Hayat Boumeddiene left France for Syria before Paris attacks, say official sources

by Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Paris


A woman hunted by French police as a suspect in the attacks on a satirical paper and Jewish supermarket in Paris left France several days before the killings and is believed to be in Syria, Turkish and French sources said on Saturday.

After killing the gunmen behind the worst assault in France for decades, French police launched in an intensive search for Hayat Boumeddiene, the 26-year-old partner of one of the attackers, describing her as "armed and dangerous".
But a source familiar with the situation said that Boumeddiene left France last week and traveled to Syria via Turkey. A senior Turkish official corroborated that account, saying she passed through Istanbul on January 2.

A source familiar with the situation said that Boumeddiene left France last week and traveled to Syria via Turkey.

"On January 2, a woman corresponding to her profile and presenting a piece of identity took a flight from Madrid to Istanbul," a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
The source said she was accompanied by a man and had a return ticket for January 9, but never took the flight.
A senior Turkish security official said Paris and Ankara were now cooperating in trying to trace her, but said she arrived in Istanbul without any warning from France.
"After they informed us about her ... we identified her mobile phone signal on Jan 8,” the source said. "We think she is in Syria at the moment but we do not have any evidence about that ... She is most probably not in Turkey," the source said, adding the last signal from her phone was detected on Thursday.
An official police photograph of Boumeddiene shows a young woman with long dark hair hitched back over her ears. French media, however, released photos purporting to be of a fully-veiled Boumeddiene, posing with a cross-bow, in what they said was a 2010 training session in the mountainous Cantal region.
French media described her as one of seven children whose mother died when she was young and whose delivery-man father struggled to keep working while looking after the family. As an adult, she lost her job as a cashier when she converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab.
Le Monde said Boumeddiene wed Amedy Coulibaly in a religious ceremony not recognized by French civil authorities in 2009. The two were questioned by police in 2010 and Coulibaly jailed for his involvement in a botched plot to spring from jail the author of a deadly 1995 attack on the Paris transport system.


Friday, January 9, 2015

Charlie Hebdo attack: French police hunt accomplices


by Natalie de Vallieres and Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Paris

Hayat Boumeddiene, left, and Amedy Coulibaly in images released by police during the kosher supermarket siege in Paris - 9 January 2015 Police are still searching for Hayat Boumeddiene, left, who is said to be gunman Amedy Coulibaly's partner
Police in France are hunting for any accomplices of the gunmen who killed 17 people in two days of terror attacks.
One key figure is Hayat Boumeddiene, the partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed when police stormed a supermarket in Paris on Friday.
She was said to be with Coulibaly when a policewoman was killed and is described as "armed and dangerous".
Two gunmen who carried out Wednesday's deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine were killed by police on Friday.
President Francois Hollande on Friday praised the police but also warned of further threats.
He thanked the security services for their "bravery and efficiency" in dealing with the two sieges, saying the week's violence was "a tragedy for the nation".
Mr Hollande said the danger was not over yet. "We have to be vigilant. I also ask you to be united - it's our best weapon," he said in a televised address on Friday night.
Francois Molins, the chief prosecutor in France, said authorities were urgently focusing on Boumeddiene, who is suspected of being with Coulibaly, 32, when the policewoman was killed in Paris on Thursday.
Both vanished after the shooting, but Coulibaly reappeared on Friday when he took several people hostage at the Hypercasher supermarket near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris.
French newspaper Le Monde published a series of photographs said to show Coulibaly with Boumeddiene in 2010. In one, the 26-year-old woman is pictured pointing a crossbow at the camera while wearing a full-face veil, which is banned in France.
Mr Molins said the investigation would "focus on determining who their accomplices were, how these criminal actions were financed, and all the instruction and help they may have benefited from whether in France, from overseas".
He said 16 people had been detained for questioning so far, including the wife of one of the Kouachi brothers and other members of their family.
French government ministers are meeting on Saturday morning to plan their next steps.
A number of world leaders have called Mr Hollande to express support.
Watch-lists The first siege on Friday - in Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) north of Paris - involved two brothers who had attacked the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday.
President Hollande called on the French people to remain vigilant
Cherif and Said Kouachi were shot dead as they came out of a warehouse building firing at police. Two police officers were injured.
One hostage there had earlier been released and a second employee, who was hiding in the building's cafeteria, was freed by police after the shooting ended.
Police officers on guard at Porte de Vincennes in Paris, France - 9 January 2015 Police in France remain on high alert amid the threat of further violent attacks by extremists
A screengrab taken from an AFP TV video shows a general view of members of the French police special forces launching the assault at a kosher grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris, on January 9, 2015 The moment when police stormed a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris to end a hostage siege on Friday
French police shortly afterwards launched an assault on the supermarket in Paris, killing Coulibaly and rescuing 15 hostages. They found the bodies of four hostages believed to have been killed before the assault.
French authorities have said they were aware of Coulibaly and the two brothers. Said Kouachi was known to have travelled to Yemen in 2011.
Both brothers are understood to have been on UK and US watch-lists.
Cherif Kouachi had met terrorists in Yemen, according to French authorities
While holed up in the warehouse north of Paris, Cherif Kouachi phoned a French TV news network and told them he was acting on behalf of the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda (AQAP).
The extremist group released an audio message late on Friday praising the attacks but stopped short of claiming responsibility for them.
AQAP senior leader Sheikh Harith al-Nadhari said "some in France have misbehaved with the prophets of God," adding that "God's faithful soldiers" had taught them "the limits of freedom of speech".
Earlier on Friday, a man claiming to be Coulibaly told French TV station BFMTV that he was a member of the Islamic State militant group, and that he had "co-ordinated" his attack with the Kouachi brothers.
Mr Molins confirmed that Coulibaly knew one of the brothers and their respective partners had spoken on the phone more than 500 times.
During Friday's siege, Coulibaly had threatened to kill his captives if police attempted to capture the brothers, he added.
'Mistakes made' French Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitted there had been a "clear failing" in French intelligence.
"If 17 people die, this means mistakes have been made," he said, including those killed in attacks on Wednesday and Thursday in the toll.
The violence started on Wednesday when the Kouachi brothers killed 12 people and injured 11 more in an attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Obama: "The US stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow"
The unprecedented attack shocked France and there has been an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity worldwide.
The French ministers' meeting on Saturday morning will also make preparations for a huge unity rally due to take place in the heart of Paris on Sunday.
Among those attending will be UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
US President Barack Obama said he had directed his intelligence agencies to provide France with whatever help they could to deal with further threats.
Meanwhile, the US state department has updated its travel guidance in light of the attacks in France, warning Americans to maintain a high level of vigilance when they travel abroad.
Map
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How Friday unfolded (all times GMT)
07:00 - The Kouachi brothers hijack a car in Montagny-Sainte-Felicite, north of Paris. They are said to be carrying weapons including a rocket launcher.
08:30 - Pursued along the N2 road towards Paris, they exchange fire with police and take refuge in a printing works in Dammartin-en-Goele. They take the manager hostage.
10:30 - The manager is released, but another employee remains in the building.
12:15 - A man identified as Amedy Coulibaly takes several people hostage at a supermarket near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris. Coulibaly is also suspected of having shot dead a policewoman on Thursday.
16:00 - The brothers emerge in Dammartin, opening fire on police. Both men are killed. The trapped employee is released and tells police he had been hiding on the second floor, unknown to the gunmen.
16:15 - Security forces move into the supermarket in Paris and kill Coulibaly. It emerges that four hostages at the supermarket have been killed, but 15 others are freed.
18:55 - Addressing the nation, President Hollande calls for France to "remain vigilant" and praises the "courage, bravery and efficiency" of the police forces.
What we know so far
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