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A Malian Muslim supermarket
employee who helped save the lives of several customers at the
Kosher supermarket besieged by a gunman in Paris on January 9 by
hiding them in a cold room is to be awarded French nationality
at a special ceremony on Tuesday.
Lassana Bathily, 24, was in the underground stockroom at
the Hyper Casher supermarket in eastern Paris when Amédy
Coulibaly - a French national also of Malian origin - stormed
the premises, killing four Jewish customers on his way in.
"When he entered the store, people came rushing down saying
there was an armed madman," Bathily told FRANCE 24.
"I thought the only option was to hide in the freezer, so I
switched it off and got everyone inside."
Bathily was widely hailed as a 'hero' as France struggled
to come to terms with the supermarket siege and the separate
attack by Islamist militants on the satirical weekly magazine
Charlie Hebdo two days previously in which 12 people were
killed.
Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers responsible for the
Charlie Hebdo attack were all eventually shot down by French
special forces.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is to preside over the
naturalisation ceremony Tuesday.
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