The suspected female accomplice of a gunman who took hostages at a kosher market in Paris last week crossed into Syria on Thursday, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Monday.
Mevlut Cavusoglu told the Anadolu state-run news agency that Hayat Boumeddiene flew to Turkey from Madrid on Jan. 2, then crossed into Syria on Thursday after a stay at an Istanbul hotel, according to NBC News.
French authorities named Boumeddiene along with Amedy Coulibaly, identified as her boyfriend, as suspects in the fatal shooting of a female police officer Thursday in a Paris suburb.
It had been unclear whether Boumeddiene was present Friday when Coulibaly stormed the kosher market and was later killed in a police raid. A police union spokesman told CNN at the time that Boumeddiene was seen escaping from the shop as some hostages fled.
But Cavosoglu’s intelligence, which he told the state news agency came from phone recordings, suggests Boumeddiene was not in France when the Paris terror attacks took place.
It’s appalling that Turkey still has a revolving border with Syria. It’s excuses after excuses each time it’s exposed for its security lapse. It becomes a Pakistan like border; it’s already more than a year since it’s been known that jihadist / ISIS supporters have been crossing the border in their fight against the West, as well to destabilize the region. No more respect for Turkey in its complicit to this growing problem. That country should be stripped of its NATO membership, because, it seems, it only cares for the cold cash and arms from that organization.