From a French reporter..
“You have to understand we are in a war situation..we have to say it like it is..”
Independent:
a minute ago
The Spokesperson’s Office of the European Commission and the Elysee has said that the meeting scheduled for Sunday in Strasbourg between Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel has been postponed indefinitely “due to the events” in France
Guardian:
More on the new suspected member of the terror cell from Angelique Chrisafis.
Amedy Coulibaly
Amédy Coulibaly, is 32 and from Juvisy-sur-Orge in Essonne outside Paris. He is believed to be the gunman currently holding hostages in a kosher grocery shop at Porte de Vincennes, on the eastern edge of Paris. He is also suspected of killing a French policewoman in a shoot-out in the south of Paris on Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
While still a teenager he became involved in criminality and reportedly notched up several convictions for armed robbery from 2001 when he was still a minor. The newsweekly, L’Obs reported that he had met Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers suspected of the Charlie Hebdo attack, between 2005 and 2006 when they were both inside the notorious Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris, a huge prison known for its overcrowding.
French media reported that Coulibaly had converted and become radicalised in prison.
After an initial spell in prison for armed robbery, he was reported to have then started drug-dealing and served another sentence. After that, with training as a television-fitter, he settled in Grigny in the Essonne, around 20km south-east of Paris.
He was arrested by anti-terrorist police in 2010 suspected of having taken part in a plot to aid the prison escape of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, one of the key figures behind Paris metro and train attacks in 1995.
During searches of his home, police found Kalashnikov ammunition. He received a prison sentence and is reported to have been released from prison just over a year ago.
Le Monde reported that he and Kouachi had both shared a mentor in a radical figure, Djamel Beghal, who had been convicted for a planned terrorist attack on Paris. Police are also now searching for Coulibaly’s partner, Hayat Boumedienne, who he lived with.
Hayat Boumeddiene
Hayat Boumedienne is 26. Police released a photo of Boumedienne after the kosher grocery hold-up at Porte de Vincennes early on Friday afternoon. The live-in partner of Coulibaly, Le Monde reported that she had been in a relationship with him since 2010 and had met him outside prison last spring when he was released following a four-year sentence. Coulibaly had been living with Boumedienne at her home since he left prison. Boumedienne had been interviewed by anti-terrorist police in 2010. Le Monde reported that she had told police that during a visit to the radical Islamist Djamel Beghal in Murat, in the Cantal countryside in central France, where they had practised firing crossbows.