Hayat Boumeddienne is reportedly the girlfriend or wife of Amedy Coulibaly, the French man who took hostages in Paris on Friday but was eventually killed by police.
Coulibaly, with Boumeddienne’s help, allegedly killed a policewoman just outside of Paris on Thursday before fleeing and ending up in a grocery store. He took hostages, and at least three of them were killed in the situation.
Boumeddienne, 26, was with Coulibaly in the hostage situation, but blended in with the hostages as they ran away, and then escaped, the police union spokesman told CNN.
The FBI confirmed that French police are still searching for the woman, who some reports say is his wife.
The Daily Mail says that the “armed and dangerous” woman had been with Coulibaly since 2010, living in his house while he finished up a prison sentence.
They were never married in a civil ceremony, but did get wed in a religious ceremony.
Coulibaly was a “close friend” of Cherif and Said Kouachi, who have been named as the main suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack. He demanded that the brothers be granted freedom, threatening to kill hostages if they weren’t. But the brothers, who had taken a hostage in a different location, were killed by police, and ultimately so was Coulibaly.
All three were said to be upset about the treatment of Muslims in the Middle East by Western soldiers, and trained by radical Muslims in Europe. They started getting connected to the terrorists in prison.
French police said via Twitter that Coulibaly had help from Boumeddienne in murdering policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe in the Mountrouge commune, less than 24 hours after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
