Spanish National Police have arrested a man they accuse of supplying weapons to Amedy Coulibaly, the jihadist who perpetrated the deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015.
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Antoine Denive, 27, a suspected arms dealer and the subject of an European arrest warrant issued by French authorities, was detained in the town of Rincon de la Victoria on the south coast of Spain, reports Xinhua.
“It’s also been determined that his activities were linked with people of Serbian origin, who may have facilitated his access to arms and munitions”.
In a statement, Spain’s Ministry of Home Affairs said Mr Denive fled to Spain several weeks after the Paris attacks, and continued his involvement in illegal arms dealing once established in Malaga. An expert in arms trafficking in France told AFP that the weapons used by Coulibaly – a Czech-made Scorpion submachinegun and a Kalashnikov rifle – were “very easily” available.
Coulibaly held-up a supermarket a few days after two men stormed the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris killing 12 people.
France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve had congratulated his Spanish counterpart Jorge Fernandez Diaz on the success of the operation, a ministry spokesman in Madrid said. The siege in January 2015 left five people dead.
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The Islamist gunman Amed Coulibaly killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb on January 8 and attacked the supermarket on the following day. The ministry did not say if Denive was suspected of belonging to an Islamist militant.
