London - Secret service agents raided a chain of hotels in Istanbul looking for the wife of one of the Paris terrorists two days before the attacks began, it emerged on Wednesday night.
Dozens of officials stormed the Bade Otel in Istanbul looking for Hayat Boumeddiene, the world’s most wanted woman whose husband Amedy Coulibaly went on to shoot dead a policewoman and execute four hostages at a Jewish deli.
The agents from Turkey’s National’s Intelligence Organisation (MIT) swooped on the chain’s four hotels on January 5 but the jihadi bride had already checked out and begun her journey to the Syrian border by then.
Two days after the raid, the Kouachi brothers - Cherif, 32, and Said, 34, who were in the same terror cell as the couple - killed 12 at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices.
The counter-terror operation will now be considered a missed opportunity to capture Boumeddiene, 26, and possibly prevent the terror attacks she is believed to have masterminded. The French are said to have received a number of warnings before the attacks took place.
Algerian intelligence sources warned their French counterparts on January 6 of the expected attack on the Charlie Hedbo offices that took place the next day.
Boumeddiene arrived at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport on January 2 and checked into the budget £40 a night hotel in the city’s Kadikoy district. But she arrived in Sanliurfa, a southern town close to the Syrian border, on January 4. Naim Sonmez, the owner of the hotel chain told how on January 5 ‘dozens of men marched into reception’.
He said: “One of them took out their identification badge and said, ‘We are from MIT and we can’t give you any information.’ They took everyone out of the hotel. Staff, cleaning ladies. Even customers were taken out of their rooms by the agents.
“They searched for everything. They took all our records from reception for the previous month. They took all our documents and CCTV. The agents copied our CCTV and then wiped the entire footage clean. It is now blank.”
He said they did the same thing at all four of his hotels. The father, who is in his 50s, said he only realised the significance of the raid when he saw television reports saying that Boumeddiene had stayed in Istanbul before making her way to Syria.
Another worker at the hotel added: “Staff were interviewed by the officers about two people who were supposed to be staying at hotel.”
A shopkeeper opposite said he noticed a lot of police activity in the area in the days before the raid. The man, who did not want to be named, said: “On the day of the raid I saw about a dozen men go inside and more wait outside.”
The Turkish government claims they gave France intelligence relating to Boumeddiene even before they were asked.
On Wednesday the foster family of France’s most wanted woman have told how they desperately tried to block her marriage to Coulibaly but failed because she was “deeply in love” him.
The Muslim family cared for Boumeddiene for eight years, after her mother died and her father struggled to cope.
She lived at their home, a modest semi-detached house in a poor suburb of Paris on and off between the ages of eight and 17.
Speaking from the home on Wednesday, they told of a “normal” happy child, who enjoyed holidays and nature but who severed ties with them after her marriage to Coulibaly. Last week he shot dead an unarmed trainee policewoman and murdered four hostages at a Jewish deli as part of a coordinated terror strike in Paris.
Boumeddiene, now 26, is suspected of helping plan the attacks, and is now thought to be in Syria with Islamic State fighters. Her foster family on Wednesday night pleaded with her to come home.
Speaking for the first time, her foster brother, now in his 30s, said the family had done everything possible to block the marriage to Coulibaly, a petty criminal who converted to Islam and became radicalised while in prison.
“We tried everything to avoid this wedding and did everything to convince her not to marry this man,” he said, adding: “She was very in love I think.”
The family said the last time they spoke to Boumeddiene was in October, when she called to congratulate her foster parents on their recent pilgrimage to Mecca.
Meanwhile, it emerged on Wednesday Coulibaly’s hatred of police may have stemmed from an incident in 2000, when his best friend, 19 year-old Ali Rezgui was shot five times as they tried to flee from officers after attempting to steal motorbikes from a garage in the Parisian suburb of Grigny.
Coulibaly suffered ‘profound guilt and anger’ in the aftermath, the dead boy’s lawyer said.
Daily Mail