Charlie Hebdo Massacre: Amedy Coulibaly's Family Condemns His Acts As 'Odious'

The family of Amedy Coulibaly, a French jihadist involved in the three-day run of attacks in France this week, condemned his acts on Saturday, calling them “odious” and not representative of Islam, AFP reported. Coulibaly killed a Parisian police officer Thursday and took several people hostage at a kosher supermarket Friday, killing four before French police killed him. He said he co-ordinated with the Kouachi brothers, who shot to death a dozen people at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday and led police on a three-day manhunt that ended in their deaths.

"We condemn these acts,” Amedy’s sister and mother said in a statement. “We absolutely do not share these extreme ideas. We hope there will not be any confusion between these odious acts and the Muslim religion.” They also offered their “sincere condolences” to the families of the 17 victims of the attacks.

The 32-year-old tried to justify his acts to the hostages he took at gunpoint at the kosher market, French-language RTL reported. He said people try to make all Muslims look like terrorists and asked for Muslims to be left alone.

“I was born in France,” he said. “If they didn’t attack other countries, I wouldn’t be here.”

Coulibaly told BFMTV in a phone call during the hostage-taking he was part of the Islamic State group, a radical group that has declared an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Coulibaly’s common-law wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, traveled to Syria via Turkey sometime in the week before Wednesday’s attack. She made 500 phone calls last year to the wife of Chérif Kouachi, who along with his brother, Said, initiated the sweep of terror across Paris with their brazen attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices. The Kouachi brothers separately claimed Friday they were trained by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.