Hunt on for woman linked to attackers
Rally planned after 17 people and three gunmen killed during three days of deadly violence
PARIS — France vowed to combat terrorism with a cry for freedom in a giant rally for unity Sunday after a three-day rampage of violence horrified the world. Police searched for a woman linked to the three al-Qaida-inspired attackers, but a Turkish official said she appears to have already slipped into Syria.
The rally Sunday is also a huge security challenge for a nation on alert for more violence, after 17 people and three gunmen were killed over three days of attacks on a satirical magazine, a kosher supermarket and on police that horrified France and the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched Saturday in cities from Toulouse in the south to Rennes in the west to honour the victims, and Paris expects hundreds of thousands more at Sunday’s unity rally.
More than 2,000 police are being deployed, in addition to thousands already guarding synagogues, mosques, schools and other sites around France.
The leaders of Britain, Germany, NATO and the Arab League are among dozens of world dignitaries expected to attend.
The rally “must show the power, the dignity of the French people who will be shouting out of love of freedom and tolerance,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.
Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen said it directed Wednesday’s attack against the publication Charlie Hebdo to avenge the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly’s satire. French radio RTL released audio Saturday of Amedy Coulibaly, speaking by phone from the kosher supermarket where he killed four hostages Friday, in which he lashes out over western military campaigns against extremists in Syria and Mali. He describes Osama bin Laden as an inspiration.
The focus of the police hunt is on Coulibaly’s widow, Hayat Boumeddiene. Police named her as an accomplice of her husband in the shooting of a policewoman and think she is armed.
“You must consider her as the companion of a dangerous terrorist who needs to be questioned,” said Christophe Crepin, spokesman for the UNSA police union.
But a Turkish intelligence official said on Saturday that a woman by the same name flew into Sabiha Gokcen, which is Istanbul’s secondary airport, on Jan. 2, and that she resembled a widely distributed photo of Boumeddiene.
Turkish authorities believe she travelled to the Turkish city of Sanliurfa near the Syrian border two days later, according to the official, who added: “She then disappeared.”
The president held an emergency security meeting Saturday and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the government is maintaining its terror alert for the Paris region at the highest level while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network.
Five people are in custody in connection with the attacks, and family members of the attackers have been given preliminary charges.
Loyalists of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group extolled the attackers of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper as “lions of the caliphate.”
They described the attack as revenge for the French satirical publication’s mockery of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and for France’s military involvement in Muslim countries. That attack Wednesday was the first act in France’s worst terrorist attacks in decades.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi methodically massacred 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices, led police on a chase for two days and were then cornered Friday at a printing house near Charles de Gaulle Airport.