FRANCE-SHOOTING/CITIZENSHIP Lauded as hero in Paris attack, Malian man made French citizen

Record ID: 324419

  • Title: FRANCE-SHOOTING/CITIZENSHIP Lauded as hero in Paris attack, Malian man made French citizen
  • Date: 20th January 2015
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (RECENT - JANUARY 10, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SECURITY FORCES OUTSIDE KOSHER SUPERMARKET THE DAY AFTER THE INCIDENT
  • Embargoed: 4th February 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAB3LY6O2XGKVARCTIWQ9ZF2W5K
  • Story Text: The Malian grocery worker hailed as a hero for saving hostages' lives when an Islamist militant attacked a kosher supermarket in Paris this month was made a French citizen on Tuesday (January 20).
    Lassana Bathily, 24, was joined by French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Prime Minister Manuel Valls in a packed naturalisation ceremony.
    "Tonight, I am very proud and deeply touched. I would like to thank those who always trusted me and who supported me. I think of my parents, my family in France or in Mali, in the whole world . I would like to thank my friends, my relatives in France who allowed me to work and to share nice moments," said a smiling Bathily, who also received a medal for his actions, a book on citizenship and a letter from French President Francois Hollande.
    French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve praised Bathily for his courage, heroism and modesty during the ceremony.
    "You said that you were a child you dreamed of being a French citizen, and you requested the citizenship last July. Today, this dream has come true, a little quicker than expected. Because it's nice to make true the dreams of the braves, and because the nation likes to welcome new citizens like you, who express the desire, take up its values and want to share its collective project," Cazeneuve said.
    Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who is the son of Spanish immigrants and became French when he was 20 years old, said that from the day he became Interior Minister in 2012 and before becoming Prime Minister in 2014, he had worked tirelessly on increasing the number of naturalisations.
    "When I became the Interior Minister, and on the request of the French President as it was one of his commitments, we revived the process of naturalisation not at all to sell off as some said the great French citizenship, but because we thought that welcoming new French people is an opportunity for the country, and for those who become French it's also an opportunity for them too," Valls said.
    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 January 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 newspaper.
    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 Islamist militant later killed by police, burst into the store.
    Bathily, who had worked at the store for several years, ushered the panicked shoppers into a cold storage room where they waited out the attack.
    He said in an interview with French broadcaster BFM-TV last week 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 quickly 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 practising 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.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register