Paris to award French citizenship to Malian 'hero' of supermarket siege

The young Malian supermarket employee Lassana Bathily who helped hostages during one of last week's Paris terrorist attacks is to get prompt French nationality. The fast-tracked award is to be made next Tuesday.

Deutsche Welle, 15 Jan 2015

France's interior ministry praised Bathily, a Malian Muslim, on Thursday for his "bravery" in hiding several customers after a jihadi had already begun killing shoppers in the Jewish kosher store.

France's interior ministry on Thursday said Bathily's "request" for citizenship had been fast-tracked and would be awarded next Tuesday, January 20.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he would personally preside over the ceremony for Bathily.

Last Friday's store drama, which ended in four hostage deaths and police killing gunman Amedy Coulibaly, paralleled another terrorist siege at a print works outside Paris last Friday and followed 12 deaths at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly two days earlier.

Bathily, who has lived in France since 2006 and had been waiting since last July for news of his application for nationality, told the French channel BFMTV after the attack: "We're brothers. It's not a question of Jews, Christians or Muslims."

On Thursday, he told the news agency AFP: "I do not hide Jews. I hid people."

An online petition for Bathily had already drawn 220,000 signatures, calling for his prompt naturalization, as the ministry made its announcement.

Sheltered in cool room

During the supermarket hostage-taking, Bathily ushered frightened customers into a cold storage room in the basement, shut off its refrigeration system, and closed them inside to protect them from Coulibaly's armed rampage.

Bathily then managed to flee the building and provided police with information on the store's layout that was vital for the subsequent assault that ended the siege.

Initially, police had kept Bathily in handcuffs, until they determined that he was not an accomplice of the attacker.

Tearful farewells to victims

Five victims of last week's attack on Charlie Hebdo were buried Thursday during emotional final tributes.

Cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac were both laid to rest in Paris' famed Pere-Lachaise cemetery.

Large crowds also attended the funerals of Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat, police bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro, and economist Bernard Maris, who was present when two Islamist gunmen burst into the weekly editorial conference of Charlie Hebdo weekly.

Cyber attacks unprecedented

The French military's head of cyber defense, Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere said French websites had faced an unprecedented series of electronic attacks in recent days.

Coustilliere said well-known Islamist hacker groups were among those who had targeted 19,000 websites.

Most attacks were relatively minor so-called denial-of-service intrusions directed at sites ranging from pizza shops to military regiments, but others appeared to have caused serious interference.

"What's new, what's important, is that this is 19,000 sites - that's never been seen before," Coustilliere said.

He said the cyber attacks were in response to the massive demonstrations last weekend across France.

Coustilliere said "structured groups" had used tactics like posting symbols of jihadist groups on the web sites of companies.

The German press agency DPA said in Romania police were investigating the hacking of the web site of the Romanian Orthodox church newspaper "Lumina."

A text in French appeared on its start page on Wednesday evening, warning France that it had "overstepped the boundary" with its recent actions in Mali.

ipj/sb (dpa, AFP, AP, Reuters)

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Lassana Bathily: the Paris kosher supermarket hero