FOOTAGE HAS EMERGED that Turkish television claims shows Hayat Boumeddiene at passport control in Turkey’s Sabiha Gokcen airport.
Wearing a headscarf, the woman is accompanied by a bearded, unidentified man in the security footage from 2 January. Turkish television channel Haber Turk broadcast the CCTV images today.
Today, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed the 26-year-old had crossed into Syria on 8 January – the same day her partner Amedy Coulibaly is suspected of shooting dead a policewoman outside Paris on the second day of the Paris attacks.
“She entered Turkey on January 2 from Madrid. There are images of her at the airport,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by state-run news agency Anatolia.
“Then she crossed into Syria on January 8. This is clear from the telephone records.”
The woman is believed to have stayed at a hotel in the Kadikoy district on the Asian side of Istanbul and was accompanied by another person. Cavusoglu did not give further details on the identity of the other individual and did not make clear if she had travelled to Syria on her own.
Turkish officials have insisted they were not at fault for allowing Boumeddiene to enter and then leave the country unapprehended, claiming they had not been warned by France in a timely fashion.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Turkey did not refuse Boumeddiene entry because French authorities had made no such request and that they hadn’t been warned that she was “dangerous.”
- Additional reporting from AFP.
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