France yesterday launched a massive hunt for the female accomplice of militant Islamists behind attacks on a satirical newspaper and Jewish deli, maintaining a top-level security alert ahead of a Paris ‘silent march’ with European leaders set for today.
Hundreds of troops were deployed around Paris after three days of terror that killed 17 people.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls urged a massive turnout for today’s march. Tens of thousands flocked to local vigils yesterday, with 80,000 in Toulouse and 30,000 in the Riviera city of Nice and a similar number in Pau in the southwest.
In the worst assault on France’s homeland security for decades, 17 victims lost their lives in three days of violence that began with an attack on the Charlie Hebdo weekly on Wednesday and ended with Friday’s dual sieges at a print works outside Paris and a kosher supermarket in the city.
French security forces shot dead the two brothers behind the Hebdo killings after they took refuge in the print works, and a Kalashnikov-armed associate who had planted explosives at the Paris deli in a siege that claimed the lives of four hostages.
‘Partner armed and dangerous’
Yesterday there was still a visible police presence around the French capital, with patrols at sensitive sites including media offices. There was a false bomb alert at the Eurodisney fairground to the east of the capital. “It’s no longer like before,” said Maria Pinto, on a street in central Paris. “You work a whole life through and because of these madmen, you leave your house to go shopping, go to work, and you don’t know if you’ll come home.”
The attack on Charlie Hebdo, a journal that satirised Islam as well as other religions and politicians, raised sensitive questions about freedom of speech, religion and security in a country struggling to integrate a five-million Muslim minority.
The whereabouts of the partner of the Jewish deli attacker, 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene, remained unknown. Police listed her as a suspect in that strike and an earlier killing of a policewoman, describing her as “armed and dangerous”.
“All our services are focused on looking for this person,” national police chief Jean-Marc Falcone told BFM-TV television. “We call on her to put herself in the hands of justice.”
An official police photograph shows a young woman with long dark hair hitched back over her ears. French media, however, released photos purporting to be of a fully-veiled Boumeddiene, posing with a cross-bow, in what they said was a 2010 training session in the mountainous Cantal region.
French media described her as one of seven children whose mother died when she was young and whose delivery-man father struggled to keep working while looking after the family. As an adult, she lost her job as a cashier when she converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab.
You leave your house to go shopping, go to work, and you don’t know if you’ll come home
Le Monde said Boumeddiene wed Amedy Coulibaly in a religious ceremony not recognised by French civil authorities in 2009. The two were questioned by police in 2010 and Coulibaly jailed for his involvement in a botched plot to spring from jail the author of a deadly 1995 attack on the Paris transport system.
Participation of European leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s David Cameron, Malta’s Joseph Muscat and Italy’s Matteo Renzi in a silent march through Paris with President Francois Hollande will pose further demands for security forces today.
Arab League representatives and some Muslim African leaders as well as Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will attend.
“French people need to know that all measures will be taken for this demonstration to be held in a spirit of mourning and respect, and in full security,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency cabinet meeting.
“Given the context, we remain at risk and we will maintain the highest level of security in the comings weeks.”
Political and security chiefs were reviewing how two French-born brothers of Algerian extraction could have carried out the Charlie Hebdo attacks despite having been on surveillance and ‘no-fly’ lists for many years.
Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins said late Friday the three men killed on Friday in the two security operations had had a large arsenal of weapons and had set up booby traps.