One of three gunmen behind the worst militant attacks in France for decades appeared in a video released online on Sunday, declaring his allegiance to the Islamic State armed group and urging French Muslims to follow his example.
In the seven-minute video apparently intended for release after the actions, Amedy Coulibaly, who staged the attack on a Jewish deli, said the planned assaults on a satirical journal and a Jewish target were justified by French military interventions overseas.
A French anti-terrorist police source said there was no doubt it was Coulibaly in the French-language recording.
Seventeen victims were killed in three days of violence that began with an attack on the Charlie Hebdo weekly on Wednesday and ended with Friday's dual sieges at a print works outside Paris and a kosher supermarket in the city.
French security forces killed Coulibaly (32) on Friday after he planted explosives at the Paris deli in a siege that claimed the lives of four hostages. They also shot dead two brothers behind the Hebdo killings, Said and Cherif Kouachi, after they took refuge in the print works.
The Kouachi brothers said they were aligned to al Qaeda, which competes for influence with Islamic State among militant Islamists.
Coulibaly had also called BFM-TV on Friday to claim allegiance to Islamic State, saying he wanted to defend Palestinians and target Jews.
He said in that call that he had jointly planned the attacks with the Kouachi brothers. Police confirmed they were all members of the same Islamist cell in northern Paris.
This photo circulated by the Paris police shows Hayat Boumeddiene (L) and Amedy Coulibaly. Photo: Reuters
The video showed scenes of man resembling Coulibaly doing physical training and images of an arsenal of weapons and ammunition on the wooden floor of an apartment. He was shown variously in white robes, sitting with a gun at his side, and in combat outfit.
"I pledged allegiance to the Caliph as soon as the caliphate was declared," he says, referring to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose group is an anti-government paramilitary force in both Iraq and Syria that has a growing network of followers elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia.
Coulibaly said he would be working together with the Kouachi brothers: "We've done things a bit together, a bit apart, to try and (achieve) more impact."
All you need to know on Paris shootings:
>Recent security incidents in France
- ›Dec. 1, 2007 - Gunmen suspected of belonging to Basque separatist group ETA kill two Spanish policemen working undercover in France.
- ›Jan. 11, 2009 - Arsonists use fire bombs to attack a synagogue near Paris and a place of worship in Strasbourg.
- ›Nov. 10, 2010 - Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux announces the arrest of five French nationals suspected of conspiring to launch a terror attack in France.
- ›November 2011 - A firebomb attack guts the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.
- ›March 2012 - Mohamed Merah, an al Qaeda-inspired gunman, kills seven people in three separate shootings in Toulouse. Victims included three soldiers of North African origin, a rabbi and his two young children.
- ›December 2014 - A man shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) injures 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. Prime Minister Manuel Valls says France has "never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism".