Hayat Boumeddiene ‘likely in Syria’ as IS release Coulibaly video

A woman hunted by French police as a suspect in the attacks on a satirical paper and Jewish supermarket in Paris left France several day before the killings and is believed to be in Syria, Turkish and French sources said on Saturday. After killing the gunmen behind the worst assault in France for decades, French police launched in an intensive search for Hayat Boumeddiene, the 26-year-old partner of one of the attackers, describing her as “armed and dangerous”. But a source familiar with the situation said that Boumeddiene left France last week and traveled to Syria via Turkey.

After they informed us about her … we identified her mobile phone signal on Jan 8. We think she is in Syria at the moment but we do not have any evidence about that … She is most probably not in Turkey.

A senior Turkish security official

A posthumous video released online on Sunday seems to show Boumeddiene’s common-law husband Amedy Coulibaly pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State group.  Coulibaly, who shot a policewoman and took hostages at a Jewish supermarket in the Paris attacks, claimed to be a member of the Islamic State group in the video. Speaking into the camera, the man says he “came out against the police”, while a text playing over the image confirms he killed a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday and attacked the supermarket the following day.

[Coulibaly] is not really very religious. He likes to have a good time [and] all that.

Boumeddiene told police during 2010 interview

World Coulibaly