Store siege hero to become citizen
24-year-old Malian hid six terrified shoppers from gunman before escaping to help police
THE MALIAN shop assistant who saved the lives of many people during the kosher food store siege last Friday has spoken of his “pride” at being made a French citizen next week.
In a statement praising Lassana Bathily’s “act of bravery,” interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that the 24-year-old Muslim will become a French citizen at a ceremony on Tuesday evening.
The announcement follows an outpouring of support for the young hero after his brave actions became public knowledge. An online petition calling for him to be naturalised and awarded the Legion D’Honneur quickly picked up more than 300,000 signatures.
Mr Bathily came to France to join his father in 2006 and applied for naturalisation last July. He was working in a basement stockroom of the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes when gunman Amedy Coulibaly stormed the store.
In an interview on French news channel BFMTV, he said: “I am a practising Muslim. I have prayed in the store. And yes, I helped the Jews. We are brothers. This was not a question of Jews, Christians or Muslims - we were all in the same boat.”
He described staff and customers at the store as “a second family”.
In the chaos of the first few minutes of the siege, Mr Bathily was able to guide six terrified shoppers, including a small child, in one of the shop’s two cold stores before sneaking out of the store into the arms of waiting police.
At first, they thought he may have been one of the hostage takers and arrested him, but he was soon able to give the elite anti-terror unit valuable information about the gunman, the layout of the store and the where Coulibaly had placed explosives. He has been credited with saving the lives of 15 people.
The head of France’s anti-terror unit RAID, Jean-Michel Fauvergue, told Le Monde that Mr Bathily was a "super-smart guy".
Before Sunday’s unity march, President Francois Hollande spoke to Mr Bathily on the telephone, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also publicly recognised his heroic act.
American Secretary of State John Kerry laid a wreath outside the Charlie Hebdo offices this morning, during a whirlwind visit to France.
Overnight, 12 people were arrested in anti-terror raids in France.
Photo: Screengrab / BFMTV
