Spanish police arrested a Frenchman who is suspected of supplying the weapons used by Amedy Coulibaly in the January 2015 attacks in Paris that left four people dead at a kosher supermarket and a policewoman the day before, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Antoine Denive, was arrested Tuesday in a joint operation with French police. The ministry added that two other suspects from Serbia and Montenegro were detained during the raid on a building at Rincon de la Victoria, a town close to Malaga on Spain's southern coast.
The January 2015 attacks in Paris left 17 victims and three attackers dead. Coulilbaly was responsible for five of these victims, with his shooting spree beginning Jan. 8 when he killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb and then killed four Jewish customers and employees at a kosher supermarket the following day. His rampage came to an end following a standoff with police, who shot him dead.
Brothers Charif and Said Kouachi were responsible for the remaining 12 victims after they shot several people at and near the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris on Jan. 7.
As it turns out, Denive, who spent some time in Spain prior to the attacks, left France several weeks afterward, moving his base of operations to the southern Spanish province of Malaga, where he worked under a false identity. The ministry's statement indicates that he was an arms dealer with connections to Serbian arms traffickers.
Tuesday's raid yielded several pieces of evidence that provided insight as to how Denive managed to move about Europe, such as a valid European passport under another person's name. Authorities also found a computer, which they are in the midst of studying.
Denive was brought before the National Court in Madrid, where he denied selling weapons to the attackers. Despite his plea of innocence, the judge ordered him kept in jail, according to a court spokesman who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Interestingly, Denive did express willingness to be extradited to France, which the court will likely do unless there is another case against him in Spain.
