Charlie Hebdo Suspect Secretly Buried In French City

The body of Said Kouachi, one of the alleged terrorists who gunned down 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris Jan. 7, was buried Friday evening in an unmarked grave in the northeastern French city of Reims. “I am angry,” the city’s mayor, Arnaud Robinet, told the New York Times Saturday. “But the state ordered me to accept and I did.”

Kouachi, 34, lived in Reims, which is nestled 89 miles east of Paris, and his family requested that his body be buried there, according to CBS News. Robinet was informed in a letter sent by the local prefect. State officials quietly arranged the burial in a designated area for Muslims in an unidentified Reims cemetery, the New York Times said.

“He was buried last night, in the most discreet, anonymous way possible,” Robinet reportedly said in an interview on the French channel BFM TV Saturday. He added that he did not know the exact location of the grave.

The burial site was kept under wraps for security purposes. “Given the risk of disturbance of the peace and in order to quickly turn the page of this tragic episode, it was decided to do the burial quickly," a Reims official told CBS News.

Kouachi and his brother, Cherif Kouachi, 32, were killed in a clash with French police Jan. 9, two days after the attack on the office of the weekly satirical magazine. Cherif Kouachi’s wife has asked that his body be buried in a Muslim cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Gennevilliers, a city official told the New York Times. “He was living there,” the city official, who requested anonymity, reportedly said. “Even if it doesn’t please us, we respect French law.” The date of his burial is unknown.

The body of Amedy Coulibaly, a third gunman who killed five people in Paris before he was also slain by police Jan. 9, is believed to be in a police morgue in Paris, but burial plans are unknown, the New York Times reported.

French police are still investigating suspected accomplices in the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Hyper Cacher market siege. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video Wednesday. A man claiming to be Coulibaly pledged loyalty to the Islamic State terror group in a video posted to Twitter last weekend by an unknown jihad supporter. Coulibaly said in the video that he and the Kouachi brothers synchronized their attacks, according to the Guardian.