Paris kosher siege survivors recount freezer escape

Latest update : 2015-06-08

Survivors of the January terrorist attack on a Jewish supermarket in the French capital have recalled the horror of the hostage crisis in an interview with a French newspaper.

Emilie, a 27-year-old nurse, can no longer endure the sight of blood. She’s also terrified of travelling and being in public places.

Jean-Luc does travel but his first response is to find the emergency exit no matter where he is.

Yohann forbids his wife from going to kosher stores and his son from wearing a Jewish skullcap on the street. He plans to move to Israel with his family after the summer.

Five months after an Islamist militant laid siege to Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher on January 9 in eastern Paris and killed four hostages, the trauma runs deep for those who survived the attack.

The gunman, Amédy Coulibaly, was killed by police forces at the end of the stand-off, but the feeling of helplessness they experienced still haunts former hostages, who shared their recollections with French daily Libération in a story dated June 8.

Coulibaly “had a kind of camouflage flak jacket, no hood and round, bulging eyes,” Sandra, one of the survivors, told the paper, which changed the names of some of the hostages to protect their identity.

Emilie, Jean-Luc, Yohann and Sandra, are four former hostages who spoke to the paper, and were among those who took refuge in an underground cold storage area after spotting a staircase in the back of the supermarket, shortly after Coulibaly burst into the store.

They stayed there, ignoring Coulibaly’s exhortations to come back upstairs.

'In need of a hero'

A Malian store assistant Lassana Bathily, who was in the basement at the time of the siege, offered to help the group through a goods lift to reach an emergency exit but the terrified hostages declined.

A woman and her 10-month-old baby were among those in the cold storage.

“It was so cold, something like minus 3 or 4 degrees Celsius,” said Yohann. “I was afraid that (the baby) would not survive.”

Yohann recounted ripping out the cables to cut the cold air. His version of events differred from the one Bathily gave in interviews with several publications, including FRANCE 24, in which he said he had switched off the freezer to help those inside.

Bathily has since been given French nationality and received praise from French President François Hollande as well as governments abroad.

“Lassana Bathily is someone really good, loved by all his colleagues at Hyper Cacher, and who had actually offered to save us,” said Sandra.

Although Bathily did help the police outside by drawing up a floor plan of the store, Sandra said the media and public officials had embellished the tale by giving Bathily credit for leading the group down to the cold storage and hiding them.

“This not true, but it is not the fault of Lassana," she said. "At that time, France was in need of a hero.”

Date created : 2015-06-08