BREAKING NEWS: France's most wanted woman is in SYRIA

after 'crossing the border to Spain and flying from Madrid to

Istanbul'

Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is the 'wife' of gunman Amedy Coulibaly

He killed a policewoman and then four hostages in a kosher bakery
Police source said Boumeddiene flew to Turkey via Madrid on January 2
She was believed to have crossed the Turkey- Syria border on Thursday
Police are interrogating wives of Kouachi brothers in a bid to trace her
Coulibaly was killed as commandos stormed the kosher bakery

By FIDELMA COOK and PETER ALLEN IN FRANCE and CLAIRE DUFFIN and JENNY
STANTON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 16:36 GMT, 9 January 2015 | UPDATED: 17:43 GMT, 10 January 2015
The wife of the Paris supermarket gunman may be in Syria, police sources have said.
Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman and then
four hostages at a kosher bakery.
A police source said she flew to Turkey via Madrid on January 2, despite alleged sightings of
her in Paris on Thursday.
Authorities in Istanbul then reported seeing a woman matching her description cross the
Turkey- Syria border on Thursday, the day her husband killed policewoman Clarissa JeanPhillipe.
Sources say she had a return ticket from Istanbul to Madrid for yesterday but failed to show for
the flight.
Police were today interrogating the wives of the Kouachi brothers responsible for the Charlie
Hebdo massacre in a bid to track down Boumeddiene.
Hundreds of phone calls between Boumeddiene and Izzana Hamyd, wife of Cherif Kouachi,
have shown up on mobile records. Five hundred in all were made last year.

Radicalised: Hayat Boumeddiene (left) pictured with her husband Amedy Coulibaly (right)
who is one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt in 48 hours of bloodshed

'Armed and dangerous': It is becoming clear that the one-time cashier was radicalised after
meeting the man she would marry
The wife or girlfriend of the older Kouachi brother, Said, is also being held.
French Algerian Boumeddiene is now not thought to have been with Coulibaly at any time in
the Kosher Supermarket and to have fled immediately after the killing.
Wearing a skimpy bikini with her arms wrapped around her lover's waist, this is Boumeddiene
before she turned into a jihadi killer's accomplice and became France's most wanted woman.
Photographs of the 'wife' of the Kosher supermarket hostage killer reveal how she was
radicalised by the man she would go on to marry.
Her husband Amedy Coulibaly is dead, one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt
in 48 hours of bloodshed.
Now, 26-year-old Boumeddiene is on the run and is believed to be 'armed and dangerous'.
Coulibaly died in a hail of bullets along with four hostages in the storming of the Jewish
supermarket.
The couple 'married' in a religious ceremony after Boumedienne, who was never seen without
her veil, waited four years for him to come out of jail following his conviction for armed
robbery.
The couple were never married in a civil ceremony the only form of marriage legally
accepted in France.

Jihadi couple: Boumeddiene (right) walked away from a low-paid job as a cashier in 2009 and
started wearing a veil. She devoted herself to Coulibaly (left)

'Cool and composed': Boumeddiene never wavered under police cross examination. When told
they knew she and Coulibaly had visited Beghal at the same time as Cherif Kouachi and two
other convicted terrorists, she replied: 'We went there for crossbow practice'

Cornered: French police named the hostage taker as Amedy Coulibaly (left), 32, but
Boumeddiene (right), 26, is not thought to have been at his side at the time

Stunned: A 27-year-old Coulibaly (pictured) once 'gushed' with excitement when he was handpicked to meet former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy
While Coulibaly had a well documented track record, details of Boumeddiene's troubled
childhood are only now emerging.
Like her husband she was born into a large family, seven children, in 1988 but when she was
just six years old, her mother died.
The eldest children left home, according to reports in Le Parisien, and social workers took over.
It is suggested that Boumeddiene may have been put into care.
Estranged from her father, she met him briefly once more and introduced him to Coulibaly.
But all may not have been as settled as the young woman, radicalised by her husband, thought.
It is understood he had made it clear he wanted to take a second wife, according to other
reports.
Today, questioned by police at his home in Nanterre, a Paris suburb, Boumeddienes father is

said to be shocked and unable to believe that his daughter was involved with the terrorist cell.
But it is becoming clear that the one-time cashier was radicalised after meeting the man she
would marry.
She is from an Algerian background and altered her surname to make it sound more French',
according to an investigating source.
She told police who interviewed her as part of their inquiries into Coulibalys murky dealings
with Islamic extremists that she had walked away from a low-paid job as a cashier in the Juvisy
suburb of Paris in 2009 and taken the veil. She devoted herself to Coulibaly.
Interrogated by police in 2010, Boumeddiene said she was inspired by her husband and the
radicals she lived with to read a lot of books on religion and because of this, I came to ask
questions on religion.
When I saw the massacre of the innocents in Palestine, in Iraq, in Chetchna, in Afghanistan or
anywhere the Americans sent their bombers, all that well, who are the terrorists?'
She added that when Americans killed innocents, it was the right of men to defend their women
and children.
Always cool and composed, Boumeddiene never wavered under police cross examination.

Going in: Special forces storm the Jewish grocery to the east of Paris where terrorist Amedey
Coulibaly had taken at least seven people hostage

Chilling: The body of a man can be seen at the entrance of the Jewish supermarket after it was
stormed by commandos
Terrified: Hostages - who had been held for hours with Coulibaly threatening to kill them - flee
from the shop, crying with relief

Wanted: Police issued this picture describing the couple as suspects in the shooting dead of a
female police officer at Montrouge
When told that they knew she and Coulibaly had visited Beghal at the same time as Cherif
Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists, jihadi recruiter Ahmed Laidouni, and Farid Melouk
of GIA, she replied: 'We went there for crossbow practice.
The couple lived in nearby Bagneux, where they were known as a devoutly religious couple,
despite Coulibalys regular run-ins with the law.
To neighbours the pair were quiet, respectful and normal and had even gone on a holiday to
Malaysia together.
But a month ago they simply disappeared from their suburban house until flashed across the
worlds screens today.
Coulibaly murdered at least four hostages at the Kosher supermarket in Paris, according to
Reuters news agency.
He is believed to be part of an Al Qaeda terror cell linked to a British-based jihadi extremist,
Djamel Beghal.
The 50-year-old preacher, who recruited terrorists while worshipping at London's Finsbury
Park mosque, met Cherif Kouachi while in prison in Paris.
Hostages taken at Paris kosher supermarket after shooting

Armed: Dozens of police officers took refuge outside the Kosher bakery in Vincennes, where
Ademy Coulibaly was holding hostages

Siege: French police, with weapons in hand, head to yet another terror attack in Paris

Ultimatum: The hostage taker threatened to kill the remaining captives if the Charlie Hebdo
attackers were raided

Coulibaly has a long history of both petty and serious crimes. The only boy born in a family of
ten in Juvisy, Essonne, he first came to police attention as a 17-year-old delinquent.
Convictions for theft and drug offences followed. In September 2002 in Orleans, Loiret, he was
arrested for the armed robbery of a bank.
It's believed he became involved with the younger of the Kouachi brothers, Cherif, when he
was part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in

Iraq. Kouachi was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

The two sieges by suspected Islamic terrorists played out at the same time, as fears grew that
they would be looking to cause another bloodbath.
Coulibaly is believed to be the one responsible for shooting a policewoman dead in south Paris
on Thursday.

+21
Suspects: The three men were named as Cherif Kouachi (left), 32, his brother Said Kouachi
(right), 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18, of Gennevilliers

Surveillance: A French army helicopter flies over the industrial area where Charlie Hebdo
massacre suspects were hiding

Cornered: French special forces are pictured in Corcy, near Villers-Cotterets, where the
Kouachi brothers were believed to be hiding

On the run: French police surrounded an area north-east of Paris where the armed men, who
killed 12 people in Paris on Wednesday, were believed to be hiding

The revelation led police to link it to the murder of 12 people around the offices of the Charlie
Hebdo satirical magazine on Wednesday.
'He was in the same Buttes Chaumount cell as the Kouachi brothers,' said a source close to the
investigation.
'He was friends of both of them.'
Both Said Kouachi, 34, and his brother, Cherif Kouachi, 32 who have been killed in a
building north of Paris were first arrested in 2005
They were suspected members of the Buttes Chaumont a group operating out of the 19th
arrondissement of Paris and sending terrorist fighters to Iraq.
Cherif was convicted in 2008 to three years in prison, with 18 months suspended, for his
association with the underground organisation.
He had wanted to fly to Iraq via Syria, and was found with a manual for a Kalashnikov the
automatic weapon used in Wednesday's attack.
Said was freed after questioning by police, but like his brother was known to have been
radicalised after the Iraq War of 2003, when Anglo-American forces deposed Saddam Hussein.
Both brothers were said to be infuriated by the killing of Muslims by western soldiers and war
planes.
Police corner Paris attack suspects near the city's airport

Taking position: Special forces snipers fix their gaze on the position of the Kouachi brothers

Hostile force: Police take their positions around the Kouachi brothers' location in Dammartinen-Goele

Calm before the storm: Police rendezvous near the Kouachi brothers' location before launching
their attack
Vincent Olliviers, Cherif's lawyer at the time, described him as initially being an 'apprentice
loser - a delivery boy in a cap who smoked hashish and delivered pizzas to buy his drugs.
But Mr Ollivier said the 'clueless kid who did not know what to do with his life met people
who gave him the feeling of being important'.
Belkacem was a leading members of the GIA, or Armed Islamic Army an Algerian terror
outfit responsible for numerous atrocities.
The Kouachi brothers, who are orphans, were radicalised by an Iman operating in northern
Paris.
They were raised in foster care in Rennes, in western France, with Cherif training as a fitness
instructor before moving to Paris.
They lived in the 19th arrondissement and were radicalised by Farid Benyettou, a janitorturned-preacher who gave sermons calling for jihad in Iraq and suicide bombings.
The Kouachis share similar backgrounds to Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old French
Algerian responsible for murdering seven people, including four Jews and three Muslim
soldiers, in the Toulouse area in 2012.
Merah, who was himself shot dead by police, had also been left to operate as a terrorist in
France, despite the authorities knowing he had trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2903601/Wife-Koshersupermarket-killer-armed-dangerous-run-police-warn.html#ixzz3ORlVM8Sl
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