Spanish police have arrested a French man who allegedly supplied the arms used by gunman Amedy Coulibaly in an attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015, Spain’s interior ministry said on Wednesday.
Coulibaly killed five people, including a policewoman, during a two-day assault.
Antoine Denive, a 27-year-old from Sainte Catherine in France, was arrested on Tuesday in Rincon de la Victoria, a town close to Malaga, the ministry said in a statement.
It was a joint operation with French police, the ministry said.
The Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb on January 8th and attacked the supermarket the following day. He was shot dead by police.
Two other gunmen shot 12 people at and near the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris on January 7th.
Before he carried out the attacks, Coulibaly spent time in Spain with his wife and an unknown third person, Spain's High Court said last year.
False identity
Denive is said to have fled France several weeks after the attack in Paris and set up a new base in Malaga, where he continued his illegal arms dealing under a false identity.
The ministry did not say if Denive was suspected of belonging to an Islamist militant group.
Spain’s High Court said on Wednesday Denive had denied selling arms to Coulibaly but said he was willing to be extradited to France.
The court would send Denive to be tried in France unless there was another case against him in Spain, El Pais newspaper said.
Two other men from Serbia and Montenegro linked to arms trafficking were also arrested during the police raid, the ministry said.
Reuters