Muslim Hero Held 90 Minutes Before Cops Believed He'd Saved Hostages

Lassana Bathily, the grocery clerk who has received international accolades for his heroism during the recent hostage crisis at a Parisian kosher market, was detained for 90 minutes by Paris police after alerting them that several customers were alive and hiding in the basement.

From the Washington Post:

[Bathily] heard gunman Amedy Coulibaly enter the store and open fire, killing four customers, it was later learned. Then, according to witnesses interviewed by the Associated Press and accounts in French media, Bathily ushered more than a dozen customers downstairs. He then killed the lights and turned off the stockroom’s freezer.

Bathily, a practicing Muslim who was born in Mali, then volunteered to escape the store and alert police of the group’s whereabouts. He asked others to come with him, but everyone was too scared of the gunman to leave.

Bathily slipped out of the basement and walked out of the building to meet police, who initially thought he was perhaps an accomplice. They ordered him to lie down and put his hands behind his head…Bathily spent the next 90 minutes in cuffs before he managed to convince authorities he was who he said he was. He told the cops he wasn’t alone. There were more than a dozen other hostages locked inside the store’s freezer.

(Emphasis ours.)

Following his release, Bathily provided police with the key to the supermarket’s metal blinds and explained the layout of the store—the two things that allowed the cops to barge the building and apprehend the gunman (who was killed in the altercation).

Following the hostages’ release, Bathily told press that they told him, “‘Really, thanks for thinking of all these ideas.’ I said, ‘It’s nothing. It’s life.’ ”