Coulibaly had 3 day stay in Spain, alleged arms dealer in Belgium
Spanish newspaper says kosher supermarket attacked stayed in Spain with unidentified individual in beginning of January; man in Belgium turns himself in to police saying he had contact with Coulibaly.
Two new developments emerged on Thursday in the investigation into Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist behind the kosher supermarket attack and the killing of a French policewoman. A Spanish newspaper has reported that Coulibaly spent three days in Madrid in the beginning of January, days before the attack, and in Belgium a man turned himself in to authorities, saying he had been in touch with Coulibaly.
Coulibaly, one of the three perpetrators of the attacks in Paris, stayed in Madrid for three days between December 30 and January 2, according to a report by a Spanish newspaper.
Coulibaly, suspected of killing a police officer on January 8 following which he conducted a bloody hostage-taking in a kosher supermarket in Paris, was in Madrid before the attacks and was accompanied by an individual not yet identified, said the Catalan daily La Vanguardia.
It is already known that Coulibaly's companion Hayat Boumeddiene had passed through Madrid on her way to Turkey. However, his potential nearly three day stay with her in the capital would be a novelty.
According to the Turkish authorities, the young woman had passed through Madrid and Istanbul and entered Syria on January 8, according to La Vanguardia.
Spanish anti-terrorism agencies are investigating with their French counterparts to determine Coulibaly's activities in Spain and see whether there may be a Madrid support cell.
According to the Spanish authorities, some 70 Islamist fighters from Spain returned from conflict zones to the country in 2014.
Meanwhile, Belgian authorities have detained a man for arms dealing and are investigating whether he supplied Coulibaly weapons for the attacks, Prosecutors said Thursday.
Belgian media reported that a man had handed himself in to police in the southern city of Charleroi on Tuesday, saying he had been in touch with Coulibaly.
According to the reports, the man said that he swindled Coulibaly in a car sale, but police later found evidence that the two were negotiating about the sale of ammunition for a 7.62 mm caliber firearm.
Bullets of this caliber are needed for the Tokarev pistol that Coulibaly used in his attack on the supermarket in Paris, where he killed four hostages, and possibly in the shooting and injuring of a jogger two days earlier.
"The man is being held by the judge in Charleroi on suspicion of arms dealing," a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecution said. "Further investigations will have to show whether there is a link with the events in Paris," he added.
Coulibaly was killed on January 9 in an assault conducted by an elite French unit after he took hostages and killed four Jewish-Frenchman at a Kosher supermarket in a Paris suburb. He acted in coordination, he said, with Cherif and Said Kouachi who killed twelve people in the attack against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
