France is marking 10 years since a terror attack at a Paris kosher supermarket left four Jewish people and their Islamist assailant dead. The majority of hostages survived thanks to the quick thinking of a Muslim employee from Mali who helped police end the siege. Lassana Bathily sat down with RFI to recall the day he became an accidental hero.
Bathily was 24 and stacking shelves when gunman Amedy Coulibaly stormed the Hypercacher store at Porte de Vincennes on 9 January 2015, two days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
The narrative of a Muslim saving Jews from a jihadist made him a strong symbol of fraternity in a traumatised France.
“I’m just a good, simple citizen who reacted at the right time,” Bathily told RFI, denying he's a hero.
However, a decade on, he's still "scarred" by what was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in modern French history.
Huddled in a cold store
Bathily was winding up his shift in the late afternoon, unpacking frozen items in the basement, when he heard shots fired upstairs.
Coulibaly, who claimed to be working in the name of Islamic State, had shot dead three shoppers and taken 17 others hostage.
He threatened to kill them unless the Kouachi brothers – who had carried out the Charlie Hebdo attacks two days earlier and were holed up in a printworks outside Paris – were allowed to go free.
“At first I thought it was an accident outside. But when the shots were repeated and then I saw all these customers, about 20 people, coming down towards me, I started to understand what was happening," Bathily said.
He ushered them into the cold store, holding the door. After a few minutes he suggested they try and escape by using the goods lift to reach the emergency exit.
“They didn’t want to, they said it would put our lives in danger. I told them our lives were already in danger and we had to try something, but they didn’t want to follow me,” Bathily added.
So he cut off the motor, told them to put their phones on silent mode, and took the delivery lift alone.
Looking back, Bathily said the hostages had made the right decision. Colleagues later told him that Coulibaly had heard a noise near the emergency exit and went to investigate.
He would almost certainly have fired on a crowd.
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Seen as an accomplice
Outside, police mistook Bathily for an accomplice.
“They thought I had explosives on me so they shot at me," he said. "They treated me badly in the beginning. They kept me handcuffed for an hour and a half.”
Once they realised he was a supermarket employee, Bathily used his knowledge of the store to map out the layout, helping police to prepare their raid.
Elite forces stormed the supermarket, killing Coulibaly and rescuing 15 hostages. Four hostages were found dead.
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A reluctant hero
Bathily’s actions drew national attention, and the media celebrated him as a hero. A BFMTV video of him went viral.
“It was very difficult because I gave my first interview at 2 or 3 in the morning," the now 34-year-old said. "Then the next day my face was everywhere and everyone was talking about me. People started criticising me, too.”
Some said that media and politicians in need of a feel-good story after three days of terrorist violence had exaggerated Bathily’s role.
“The media and officials wanted to paint this pretty picture, that he helped us escape downstairs, that he hid us, and so on,” one of the hostages told the daily Liberation a year after the attacks.
“It wasn’t really true, but that’s not Lassana’s fault.”
Bathily maintains he "didn't invent anything" but was out of his depth and overwhelmed.
“A Muslim working with Jews, who saved Jews, became a strong symbol," he said. "No one was expecting it. I’ve always said Jews are my brothers.”
He had practised his faith freely at work, praying daily and observing Ramadan. One of the victims who died, Yohan Cohen, had been his good friend.
“I always say I saved human beings, whether Jews, atheists, or whatever. We’re all human beings, and we have to help one another when needed,” he added.
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'Long live France'
Eleven days after the supermarket siege, Bathily was granted French nationality by then president François Hollande.
Having arrived in France in 2006 aged 16 as an unaccompanied minor, he had become, in the words of Hollande, “my favourite Frenchman”.
‘Long live freedom, long live friendship, long live France’, Bathily said in his acceptance speech.
The recognition has helped Bathily to build a normal life.
He now works at Paris city hall organising events, and goes into schools to talk about his experience and the importance of fighting against both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
“I’ll continue to tell my story, to talk about how we can continue to live together, whatever our religion,” Bathily said – though his hope to become an ambassador for fraternity remains unfulfilled.
Back in his home region of Kaï in southern Mali, some still speak of his actions. "They say: 'Oh it's Bathily the guy who saved people in France'," he said.
"But in my own village we’ve moved on. I’m just Lassana. Lassana of the past, Lassana of the present. Still the same.”
