Prosecutor: Paris grocery gunman linked to 3rd shooting

Amedy Coulibaly, one of the three gunmen behind the worst militant attacks in France for decades, declares his allegiance in an unknown location to the Islamic State, in this still image taken from video Jan 11, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

PARIS - The shooting of a jogger in a Paris suburb on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre has been linked to the gunman who killed a policewoman and four hostages at a kosher grocery, a prosecutor said Sunday.

In a brief statement, the prosecutor said ballistics tests on shell cases from the shooting Wednesday in Fontenay aux Roses linked them to the automatic weapon at the kosher store stormed two days later. The prosecutor said the jogger was seriously wounded.

Amedy Coulibaly was killed when police stormed the market. That raid took place just minutes after security forces killed the brothers who carried out the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper that lampooned Islam and other religions.

Earlier Sunday, video of emerged of Coulibaly where he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group and defends the attacks on the satirical newspaper and the Jewish store. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen has previously said it directed the brothers' attack on the newspaper to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the video, apparently filmed over several days, Coulibaly can be seen with a gun, exercising and giving speeches in fluent French and broken Arabic in front of an Islamic State emblem. He defends the attacks carried out on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, police and the Jewish store.

"What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are doing," Coulibaly tells the camera. "You cannot attack and not expect retribution so you are playing the victim as if you don't understand what's happening."

The SITE Intelligence Group said it had verified the video, and a former drug dealing associate of Coulibaly's confirmed to The Associated Press the man in the video was indeed the slain hostage-taker. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to attract police attention.

Coulibaly shot a policewoman to death on the outskirts of Paris the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, while the brothers who carried it out were on the run. On Friday, with the brothers cornered inside a printing house near Charles de Gaulle airport, he took over the kosher grocery, demanding freedom for the two.