Posted on 01/21/2015 7:13:13 AM PST by csvset
The gunman who killed four shoppers at a Paris kosher store on January 9 was stopped by a police patrol just days before his deadly rampage but promptly let go, French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reports.
Amédy Coulibaly was shot dead by police after the hostage siege at the Hyper Casher grocery in eastern Paris. French authorities have also linked him with the fatal shooting of a policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris the day before.
Coulibaly, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, had coordinated his attacks with brothers Saïf and Chérif Kouachi, the authors of a deadly assault on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were killed.
According to the Canard, another satirical weekly that is known for its investigative reporting, Coulibaly and his partner Hayat Boumeddiene were stopped in a random check by police officers while driving a rental car in Paris on December 30.
The French weekly said the 32-year-old was driving without a licence, having only just passed his driving test. The car had been rented in Boumeddiene's name.
The officers reportedly searched their database of wanted persons and Coulibaly’s name came up, along with instructions to question him without raising suspicions. The database described Coulibaly, a petty criminal who converted to radical Islam while in jail, as “dangerous and belonging to Islamist movements”.
The officers immediately notified the police’s anti-terrorism unit, the Canard reports, but nothing came of it.
Hours later, Coulibaly and his partner crossed the border into Spain, where Boumeddiene boarded a flight to Turkey on January 2. Turkish authorities say she entered Syria six days later. She is still wanted by French police.
French officials have not commented on the allegations by the Canard, which has printed extracts of a report by one of the police officers who stopped Coulibaly and Boumeddiene.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls has acknowledged intelligence “failings” in the wake of the country’s deadliest terrorist attacks in half a century.
He is due to present new security measures on Wednesday that will include efforts to increase intelligence-gathering against jihadis and other radicals, block their activities on the Internet, and prevent them from collaborating inside prisons or travelling abroad to fight.
On Tuesday, the Paris prosecutor's office called for charges to be filed against four men arrested on suspicion of links to the shootings in the French capital.
How does one rent a car without a license?
Say the magic words: Allahu AKBAR, Y'ALL!
The car was rented in the woman's name. How do you let a guy with warnings of “dangerous and belonging to Islamist movements” go without incident?
I know it's easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking but it sounds like these guys seriously fumbled this one. What was the police’s anti-terrorism unit doing that they were too busy to respond ?
Tsarnaev Brothers,, Major Hassan,,, Anwar Al-Awlaki,,,etc
Notice all the sudden arrests of terror suspects in Europe lately?
All those holes could have been arrested a long time ago. But political correctness ruled the day, so there was no will to do what should have been done.
Now it’s different. The Hebdo massacre really woke up a lot of naive Europeans.
Too much deference to muslims in the West.
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