Paris supermarket 'hero' to receive French nationality +rpt+

(fixes typo in slug). (ANSA) - Paris, January 20 - 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.