Paris Hyper Cacher employee stars in documentary about his rescue mission
Lassana Bathily: A Hero Despite Himself was broadcast on Tuesday night on France’s Channel 2, during the fifth anniversary of the Paris attacks.
By OMRI RONFRENCH POLICE OFFICERS stand guard outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris on January 10, 2015.(photo credit: YVES HERMAN / REUTERS)
In commemoration of the five year anniversary of the attack at Hyper Cacher market, which occurred two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, French TV aired a documentary entitled Lassana Bathily: A Hero Despite Himself, the Algemeiner reportedThe documentary pays tribute to Lassana Bathily, a Muslim employee at Hyper Cacher who saved lives during the attack. Bathily immigrated to France from Mali.During the attack, Bathily led the customers into the basement of the store and went to call the police so that they could take care of the incident. After some trouble with them thinking he was aiding the attacker, Bahtily managed to convince the police that he was helping the hostages and was able to provide them with the information needed to be able to end the attack with no further causalities.The man who carried out the attack at the supermarket was a Islamist gunman by the name of Amedy Coulibaly, who, at the time, said he wished to protect the Palestinians and target Jews, went into the supermarket where he killed four.In this documentary, Bathily spoke about his perspective of these events. “We are brothers. It’s not a question of Jews, of Christians or of Muslims. We’re all in the same boat, we have to help each other to get out of this crisis.”In another part of the film, he spoke about how both are from Malian origins, and cited education as the reason they turned out different: " Between Amedy Coulibaly and me, the only difference is that he was born in France, whereas I was born in Mali. We speak the same languages, except that he benefited from a French education and me from an African education.”