Photographs of the 'wife' of the Kosher supermarket hostage killer reveal how she was radicalised by the man she would go on to marry.
Her husband Amedy Coulibaly is dead, one of the three terrorists who brought France to a halt in 48 hours of bloodshed.
Now, 26-year-old Boumeddiene is on the run and is believed to be 'armed and dangerous'.
Coulibaly died in a hail of bullets along with four hostages in the storming of the Jewish supermarket. But Boumeddiene may have eluded capture during the confusion as the hostages were running away, police said.
The couple 'married' in a religious ceremony after Boumedienne, who was never seen without her veil, waited four years for him to come out of jail following his conviction for armed robbery.
The couple were never married in a civil ceremony – the only marriage legally accepted in France.While Coulibaly had a well documented track record, Boumeddiene tonight remains a shadowy figure.
But it’s becoming clear that the one-time cashier was radicalised after meeting the man she would marry.
She is from an Algerian background and altered her surname to ‘make it sound more French', according to an investigating source.
She told police who interviewed her as part of their inquiries into Coulibaly’s murky dealings with Islamic extremists that she had walked away from a low-paid job as a cashier in the Juvisy suburb of Paris in 2009 and taken the veil. She ‘devoted herself’ to Coulibay.
Interrogated by police in 2010, Boumeddiene said she was inspired by her husband and the radicals she lived with to ‘read a lot of books on religion and because of this, I came to ask questions on religion.’
‘When I saw the massacre of the innocents in Palestine, in Iraq, in Chetchna, in Afghanistan or anywhere the Americans sent their bombers, all that…well, who are the terrorists?'
She added that when Americans killed innocents, it was the right of men to defend their women and children.
Always cool and composed, Boumeddiene never wavered under police cross examination.
When told that they knew she and Coulbaly had visited Beghal at the same time as Cherif Kouachi and two other convicted terrorists, jihadi recruiter Ahmed Laidouni, and Farid Melouk of GIA, she replied: 'We went there for crossbow practice.’
The couple lived in nearby Bagneux, where they were known as devoutly religious couple, despite Coulibay’s regular run-ins with the law.
To neighbours the pair were quiet, respectful and normal and had even gone on a holiday to Malaysia together.But a month ago they simply disappeared from their suburban house until flashed across the world’s screens today.
Coulibaly murdered at least four hostages at the Kosher supermarket in Paris, according to Reuters news agency.
He is believed to be part of an Al Qaeda terror cell linked to a British-based jihadi extremist, Djamel Beghal.
The 50-year-old preacher, who recruited terrorists while worshipping at London's Finsbury Park mosque, met Cherif Kouachi while in prison in Paris.
Coulibaly has a long history of both petty and serious crimes. The only boy born in a family of ten in Juvisy, Essonne, he first came to police attention as a 17-year-old delinquent.
Convictions for theft and drug offences followed. In September 2002 in Orleans, Loiret, he was arrested for the armed robbery of a bank.
It's believed he became involved with the younger of the Kouachi brothers, Cherif, when he was part of a jihadist recruitment ring in Paris that sent fighters to join the conflict in Iraq. Kouachi was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.
It is not known whether Boumeddiene was in the Kosher store with Coulibaly.
The two sieges by suspected Islamic terrorists played out at the same time, as fears grew that they would be looking to cause another bloodbath.
Coulibaly is believed to be the one responsible for shooting a policewoman dead in south Paris on Thursday.
