Amedy Coulibaly vs. the Secular France Of Today with Eirin Forsberg

Expat actress Eirin Forsberg is currently residing in France and recounts her compelling personal experience of being very near the Kosher market where hostages were taken and four people killed in the Paris attacks, and also reveals her relationship to the sister of the attacker.

“I was really nearby,” Forsberg reveals about being just 300 yards from the Kosher market in which gunman Amedy Coulibaly killed four people.

“I was at the post office, and I could hear the fast shootings… We all turned around to each other, asking each other ‘what was that? So we went out on the street and we could very quickly hear the police cars and sirens coming closer and closer – and also a helicopter came around very quickly.”

She said she then went home because she assumed that police were tracking the Kouachi brothers – suspects in the earlier attack of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – and realized the latest incident happened in the nearby market.

The Kosher shop was located in a residential that is known to be a Jewish area, according to Forsberg.

She said that as soon as she heard the name Amedy Coulibaly as the attacker, she began to ask herself if he could be related to her dance teacher with the same last name.

It was not until she was contacted by foreign authorities that she realized it was in fact Amedy’s sister that is her friend. “I had to wait for the Scandinavians and also the Americans to contact me… and they asked me, ‘So aren’t you working with this woman, she’s Amedy’s sister.’

And that’s when I again started to link them up. And it’s actually still today very difficult to figure out that they’re actually sister and brother through the French Connection and Internet sources,” she said. “But I have had in confirmed by Maimouna herself now.”

She adds that she has not yet spoken with Maimouna personally, but she did hear from her in an email in which she “confirms that she’s in pain.”

Speaking about the jihadist’s sister, Forsberg said Maimouna could not be more opposite than Amedy. “She’s working for liberation, for women’s liberation… she working for peace and love and harmony and enlightening this world. “So it’s quite impossible to understand how these two people grew up together.”

Forberg also addresses the climate in the country between Muslims and those of other religions, as well as the French government relations to the majority Muslim nations and the rest of the world.

“France is a Latinate country, which makes them always work from the heart. So they have this affectionate relationship with African countries, northern African countries, Arab countries, Lebanon, even Syria,” she said. “We have these histories with them, so they still have affectionate relationships with the countries.”

Watch the full interview to also hear Forsberg discuss France’s policies on separation of church and state, and the myth currently making headlines that there are Muslim no-go zones in France.