The Malian grocery worker hailed as a hero for saving hostages’ lives when an militant attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this month was made a French citizen on Tuesday.
Lassana Bathily, 24, was joined by French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in a packed naturalization ceremony.
“I am so happy to get dual nationality,” said a smiling Bathily, who also received a medal for his actions. “Long live freedom, long live solidarity, long live France.”
Photo: Reuters
Bathily, who arrived in France from Mali in 2006 and received his working papers five years later, has been credited with saving many lives in the Jan. 9 attack that killed four people at the kosher store in eastern Paris.
Previous militant attacks that week killed 13 others, most of them at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.
Hailed by Cazeneuve and Valls as a model of decency and Republican values, Bathily tried for years to obtain French nationality and was even turned down in 2011 before he was handed his passport by Valls.
The inventory worker was in a storage room in the rear of the market when Amedy Coulibaly, the militant later killed by police, burst into the store.
“When I heard the gunshots I saw a lot of people running ... saying: ‘Help, help, they’re here, the killers, they’ve come into the store,’” Bathily told BFM-TV in an interview last week.
Bathily, who had worked at the store for four years, ushered the panicked shoppers into a cold storage room, where they waited out the attack. He said he tried to convince the others to escape by an elevator, but they were concerned its noise would alert Coulibaly to their presence.
Courting that risk himself, Bathily fled the store and was promptly handcuffed by police, who interrogated him for an hour and a half, he said.
After finally convincing them that he was a store employee, Bathily described the layout of the market to police to help them prepare their raid.
Bathily, a practicing Muslim who prayed in a back room of the Jewish market during his breaks, told BFM-TV it was perfectly normal to have helped the way he did.
“Yes, I helped Jews get out. We’re brothers,” he said. “It’s not that we’re Jewish or Christian or Muslims, we’re all in the same boat. You help so you can get through this attack.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was