Gunmen’s last defiant words before they died

TWO of the terrorists gave interviews by phone as the final moments of the sieges played out around Paris yesterday.

From his printworks hideout, Cherif Kouachi told a radio journalist: ‘I am a defender of the Prophet. I was sent by Al Qaeda of Yemen.

‘I’m financed by Imam Anwar al Awlaqi. Anwar is a predicateur [preacher]. He has lived in the Yemen. He is one of the thinking heads of Al Qaeda.’

Al Awlaqi, who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a US drone strike, was one of Al Qaeda’s top recruiters, US officials say. The French reporter who spoke to Kouachi said his manner was calm and determined, and he denied killing civilians. Chillingly, the terrorist insisted he did not see the murdered journalists at Charlie Hebdo as civilians, but merely as ‘targets’.

Astonishingly, another journalist was also able to speak on the phone to Amedy Coulibaly, who had taken shoppers hostage at a kosher grocery in Porte de Vincennes.

In the midst of the siege, the reporter asked Coulibaly: ‘Are you in contact with the two brothers?’ The gunman replied: ‘Yes, we made contact before the operations.’

He confirmed he had shot a policewoman in Paris the previous day, swore allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and said the attacks were ‘synchronised’.

‘Them Charlie Hebdo; me the police,’ Coulibaly explained.

Terrified hostages also reportedly called friends and family from the kosher deli. A woman told the French Europe 1 TV station she had received a call from her mother, telling her: ‘I am in the shop, I love you.’