Amedy Coulibaly: Chilling Video Shows Paris Kosher Grocery Killer Calmly Explain Horrifying Attacks
Amedy Coulibaly, the self-described ISIS terrorist who murdered four people in a Jewish kosher grocery store in Paris on Friday before himself dying in a hail of police gunfire, spoke from beyond the grave thanks to a chilling online video released by Islamic militants Sunday.
In the video, the 32-year-old killer calmly makes the claim that his attack was closely coordinated with the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The Charlie Hebdo attack, which killed 12, was carried out by two known Islamic militants, Said and Cherif Kouachi, who were killed in a separate shootout with French police Friday as well.
The haunting video apparently first appeared on a Twitter account that uses the handle @islamic_ch, and which features a photo of now-deceased al-Qaida terror chieftain Osama bin Laden as its avatar.
The video then circulated among several other militant-linked social media accounts before emerging into the mainstream media.
In the video, which can be viewed above, Coulibaly claims that he and the Kouachi brothers planned their attacks to coincide with each other, but that once they both embarked on their homicidal missions, they acted separately simply because it was easier that way.
“The brothers of our team, divided in two, they did Charlie Hebdo… I also went out a bit against the police. So yeah, we did things a bit together, a bit separate, in order to have more impact. We managed to synchronize, to get out at the same time and not create problems because we are close and in the same affair.”
In what terrorism experts are already judging to be the most curious aspect of the video, Coulibaly pledges his loyalty to the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, the paramilitary terror group that has seized large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, and which is responsible for the video-recorded beheadings of several American and British journalists and aid workers.
But the Kouachi brothers, in statements to the media, claimed to be backed by a rival terror group, the Yemen-based al-Qaida, in the Arabian Peninsula.
While leaders of the two terrorist organizations are bitter rivals and are unlikely to coordinate attacks or other activities between themselves, terrorism experts say that the Coulibaly video and the Kouachi statements show that at the level of terrorist footsoldiers, the high-level animosity may not apply, with terrorist operatives willing to work together in staging bloody attacks.
Intelligence experts in France say they have verified the video as authentic, and that the person speaking in the disturbing clip is definitely Amedy Coulibaly.
