Paris Killer Could Have Been Armed by Extreme Right – Police

A Frenchman associated with the ultra-right forces is suspected of supplying the arms that jihadist Amedi Coulibaly used in his deadly attack on a Jewish supermarket in January.

The suspect, Claude Hermant, 51, is a former soldier who had fought in the Congo, Angola, and Croatia. He was detained in January on charges of trafficking arms, The Local reported on Monday.

Hermant lives and works in Lille, close to the Belgian city of Charleroi, where Coulibaly purchased his weapons. The arms are understood to have come from Eastern Europe.

Despite his affiliation with Belgian skinheads and an extreme right French party, it's still unclear whether Hermant realized  that the weapons would be used in one of the bloodiest terror attacks in modern French history.

"Hermant did not necessarily know the final destination of the weapons," a source close to the case said. "There are always some kinds of intermediaries when it comes to trafficking like this."

Amedy Coulibaly was armed with a Škorpion vz. 61 submachine gun, a vz. 58 assault rifle and two Russian-made Tokarev pistols when he killed five people and took 15 hostage in a Jewish supermarket before he was gunned down by police.