A video has emerged purporting to show the gunman who killed a French policewoman and four hostages at a kosher grocery, pledging allegiance to ISIS and defending the attacks on the satirical newspaper and the Jewish store. The SITE Intelligence Group said it had verified the video, which shows a man resembling Amedy Coulibaly with a gun, exercising and giving speeches in front of an ISIS emblem. He defends the attacks carried out on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, police and the Jewish store.
"What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are doing," Coulibaly told the camera in fluent French. "You cannot attack and not expect retribution so you are playing the victim as if you don't understand what's happening." Coulibaly took over the kosher grocery, demanding freedom for the brothers who carried out the massacre at newspaper Charlie Hebdo. At the time, the brothers were trapped in a printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport.
All three men were killed in nearly simultaneous raids by security forces. Five people detained in connection with the three days of bloodshed in France were released from custody, the Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman said earlier Sunday. Coulibaly's widow, who has been named as an accomplice, is believed to have traveled to a Turkish city near the Syrian border and then all traces of her were lost, according to a Turkish intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
IN-DEPTH
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— The Associated Press
