Two men placed under investigation for links with Paris shooter

The Paris prosecutor's office on Friday announced that two people have been placed under formal investigation for suspected close links with Kosher supermarket gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, who killed five people on Jan. 8 this year.

The two men were accused of "participating in a terrorist criminal association to commit crimes against people," it said.

According to the French prosecutor, one suspect, Amar, exchanged 600 short messages over the course of four months with Amedy Coulibaly who shot dead a policewoman and killed four Jewish shoppers in two separate attacks in Paris.

The second suspect, Said, 25, was arrested after his DNA was found on a taser left by the gunman in the Kosher grocery store Hyper Cacher in Porte de Vincennes, in the French capital.

Speaking to the news channel BFMTV, Amar's defense lawyer, Regis Meliodon, said the 33-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent was "a normal Muslim who has nothing to do with terrorism and Islamism."

On Jan. 21, four suspects aged 22 to 28 years old, were placed under formal investigation and charged with helping Coulibaly prepare his attack on the kosher grocery.

Coulibaly, who claimed to be linked to the Islamic State, died in a shootout with police after raiding the kosher supermarket.

Coulibaly also admitted that his criminal acts were synchronized with those of the Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people at the headquarters of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7. Endit