News Digest

IS magazine ‘interviews’ wanted terrorist Hayat Boumeddiene

A magazine run by Islamic State has published what it claims is an interview with the widow of a terrorist who attacked a Paris supermarket last month. Hayat Boumeddiene is France’s most wanted woman after her partner Amedy Coulibaly shot dead a policewoman in Paris and then killed four shoppers the next day at a kosher shop. Now, Islamic State’s French-language magazine, Dar al Islam, has published what it claims is an interview which shows that she is in the militant group’s territory in Iraq and Syria.

I did not encounter any difficulties… it is good to live in the land that is governed by the laws of God.

Hayat Boumeddiene

There has been no independent confirmation of the interview’s authenticity but the new issue, entitled ‘May Allah Curse France’, reportedly shows a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Seventeen people, including journalists and policemen, were killed in three days of violence in Paris that began with the storming of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on 7 January and ended with the hostage-taking. Coulibaly was fatally shot with at least 40 bullets as the siege came to a violent end. Boumeddiene, 26, has apparently told Dar al Islam that Coulibaly had been an Islamic State support.