Arms Smuggler Arrested in Spain for Supplying One of the Paris Attackers

On Wednesday, April 25, the Spanish police reported the arrest of a French national accused of being a key figure in arms trafficking, who allegedly supplied weapons to Amedy Coulibaly, the perpetrator of the deadly January 2015 attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris. According to AFP, the police stated that 27-year-old Antoine Denoy from northern France was arrested on Tuesday in the Malaga region of southern Spain after a warrant for his arrest was issued by France. The police added that the suspect had left France a few weeks after the Paris attacks to evade law enforcement and had been residing in Malaga using fake documents while continuing his illegal activities. The statement mentioned that Denoy is suspected of being in contact with individuals from Serbia and procuring weapons and ammunition through them. The AFP report indicated that French police also participated in the operation to arrest this suspect. In this operation, two other individuals were arrested, one of whom is Serbian and the other a Montenegrin national. Amedy Coulibaly was one of three extremists involved in the Paris attacks from January 7 to January 9 last year, which left 17 dead. He killed a female police officer and then took hostages in a Jewish supermarket, killing four of them before being shot dead by French police. The Kouachi brothers, who were involved in the Paris operations alongside him, also killed 12 people in the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.