French Gunman Met Sarkozy in 'Crazy' Security Blunder
Source: Newsweek
An “absolutely crazy” blunder by French security officials in 2009, which allowed yesterday’s supermarket hostage taker Amedy Coulibaly to meet President Sarkozy, points to intelligence failings before this week’s attacks, Newsweek has been told.
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By the time of the meeting with Sarkozy, Coulibaly, who was killed by French police after a hostage stand-off in a Jewish supermarket in Paris yesterday in which four hostages died, had been moving in a group of radical Islamists known as the Buttes-Chaumont gang, and had a string of criminal convictions, including for armed robbery.
Coulibaly was part of a group of young people who met with the former president to discuss youth employment - at the time he was working in a Coca-Cola factory in Grigny, a suburb in the south of Paris. He was also interviewed by French newspaper Le Parisien, before his meeting with Sarkozy, in which he spoke of his excitement about it.
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“I cannot imagine how this mistake could have occurred, it is just incredible,” Moniquet told Newsweek this morning. “That is a very serious mistake. I cannot imagine that a convicted criminal, including armed robbery, criminal funds, and his participation in the terror network of Buttes-Chaumont, would ever meet the president of the United States. Clearly there was a problem in the communication between the agencies - this incident is a sign of lack of sharing. And I think the internal intelligence at the time was not good enough.”
Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/french-gunman-met-sarkozy-crazy-security-blunder-298392
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