Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman responsible for the hostage situation at a kosher supermarket in Paris today, was killed after the store was raided by French special forces. The 32-year-old was also suspected of killing a policewoman during an earlier incident.
Coulibaly used to work at Coca Cola Co. He was received at the Élysée Palace in 2009 by the then president Nicolas Sarkozy. A profile of him in Le Parisien dated July 15th, 2009, shows a photo of Coulibaly before his meeting with Mr Sarkozy. The president received him with nine other young guests to discuss youth employment.
While the Élysée Palace couldn’t confirm the 2009 meeting, an archive of the Élysée website shows Mr Sarkozy held a meeting that day with companies on employing young people.
In the Le Parisien profile, Coulibaly sounds excited at the prospect of meeting with Mr Sarkozy. “Meeting him for real is impressive,” he said. “Whether one likes him or not, he’s still the president.”
Coca Cola France spokesman Alexandre Poncet said: “Over a 10-month period from 2008 to 2009, a person named Amedy Coulibaly was employed at our manufacturing site in Grigny as part of a work placement while completing his studies.
“He then conducted interim temporary assignments until May 2010.”
Coulibaly grew up in La Grande Borne, a neighbourhood of Grigny, a suburb in Essone, 14 miles south of Paris. He had nine sisters.
Coulibaly had known Cherif Kouachi, one of the suspects in the shooting at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, since 2010, when they both joined a plot to aid a prison escape, according to police reports. They were arrested and spent time in jail together.
Cherif and his brother Said, who were killed in a separate police raid today, are suspected of having killed 12 people at the satirical weekly.
Bloomberg