Amedy Coulibaly was suspected in the killing of a policewoman in Montrouge, France, on Jan. 8. and took hostages at a kosher grocery store Jan. 9 in Paris.(Photo: Paris Prefecture via epa)
The Frenchman killed at a kosher supermarket Friday after threatening to kill hostages hailed from the same terror network as two brothers gunned down in a warehouse miles away.
Amedy Coulibaly, 32, accused of killing a policewoman Thursday, threatened to kill his hostages if police raided the printing warehouse where they had pinned down two brothers suspected in Wednesday's massacre at the satirical newspaper
Charlie Hebdo. Cherif and Said Kouachi were killed in a raid on the warehouse.
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French television channel BFMTV reached Cherif Kouachi and Coulibaly before the standoffs ended. Kouachi told BFMTV he was financed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Coulibaly told the broadcaster he was with the Islamic State group, which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria, and he "coordinated" with the Kouachis.
Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi were arrested in 2010 in connection with a prison break plot to free an Algerian bomber serving a life sentence for killing eight people. Kouachi was released for lack of evidence.
Coulibaly was sentenced to five years in prison in 2013 for his role in the plan to free Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, convicted in a bombing of a rail station museum in 1995, according to the French weekly
Le Journal de Dimanche. He was released early.
Not much is known about Coulibaly's girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, who police said had been on the run with him.
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Coulibaly and the brothers "are all part of the same network," said Thomas Joscelyn, a terrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "The attack and what they're trying to do is consistent with what AQAP had been trying to do."
The three men were known to the intelligence community, said a U.S. intelligence official who asked not to be named since he was not authorized to discuss such matters.
French authorities told their U.S. counterparts that Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen in 2011 before the senior al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed by a U.S. drone strike that September, according to a second U.S. official. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. The extent of Kouachi's training and whether he had personal contact with Awlaki was unclear.
Coulibaly was born in 1982, the only son in a family of 10 children,
Le Journal de Dimanche reported. His criminal career began at age 17 with convictions for theft and narcotics and went on to armed robbery of a bank in September 2002 in Orléans before he turned radical, the newspaper said.
Contributing: Jim Michaels, Kevin Johnson
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