Free Republic

Lassana Bathily, the Malian Muslim employee who helped save the lives of several customers during last week’s deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, will be awarded French nationality, France’s Interior Bernard Cazeneuve announced Thursday. In a statement applauding Bathily’s “act of bravery,” Cazeneuve said that the young man will become a French citizen during a ceremony on January 20. The move comes following an outpouring of public support for Bathily, whose striking story of courage trickled out in the days after the hostage crisis at the Hyper Casher supermarket in eastern Paris. The 24-year-old shop assistant was in...

'A Muslim shop worker has told how he saved "15 to 20" customers at a Jewish supermarket attacked by terrorist Amedy Coulibaly. Lassana Bathily was out of the gunman's view when he stormed the Hypercacher store in eastern Paris with guns blazing. A number of shoppers fled down stairs at the back of the shop, where they ran into the 24-year-old assistant, who thought the group could hide in a cold storage room in the basement. He has been credited with helping the hostages - including a father and his young son - to survive the siege, in which four...

PARIS (AP) — At a kosher supermarket in Paris, a quick-thinking Muslim employee hides several Jewish shoppers in the basement before sneaking out to brief police on the hostage-taker upstairs. In the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, a poker-faced businessman fools a pair of gunmen into believing they're alone in the building before being allowed to leave unharmed. In the days after the bloody end of twin French hostage crises Friday, stories of life-saving courage are beginning to filter out. One of the most striking is the story of Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali who literally provided police with the...