ISTANBUL, Turkey – Hayat Boumeddiene, the wanted partner of Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman behind the attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris that left four people dead last week, has travelled to Syria through Turkey, according to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Entering Turkey at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport on a flight from Madrid on 2 January, Boumeddiene and a man named Mahdi Sabri Belhoucine stayed at Bade Hotel in the Kadikoy district, pro-government daily Yeni Safak reported.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs, stated on Monday that they stayed in Istanbul between 2-4 January, and left Turkey on 8 January. Their whereabouts from 4-8 January remain unclear.

According to Turkish intelligence sources, the pair only left the hotel twice. They acquired a Turkish SIM card from a nearby mobile phone store, and they did not get in touch with any third person during their stay.

Conflicting reports

Twenty minutes by sea from Istanbul’s main tourist attractions, the hotels in central Kadikoy offer budget accommodations. Known for its proud local residents and alternative lifestyle compared to the European side of Istanbul, Kadikoy is a popular neighbourhood with the city’s young and mostly secular residents.

The proprietor of Bade Hotel, who did not want to discuss the recent media reports, owns two hotels of the same name in the neighbourhood.

Overwhelmed with media pressure since the Yeni Safak story broke on Monday, the receptionists at both hotels refrained from commenting to Middle East Eye, but denied the claims that the couple stayed at their establishment.

According to an eyewitness in the area, plain-clothed police or intelligence officers arrived at the hotel around 10pm on 11 January. The eyewitness told MEE that he saw officers checking what he believed to be CCTV recordings.

The Yeni Safak report, which was referred to many times in international media reports, came out only a few hours after the police search at the hotel.

Although hotel representatives repeatedly denied that the couple were their guests, local shopkeepers told MEE that they saw Boumeddiene and Belhoucine in the neighbourhood.

A local shopkeeper told MEE that a hotel employee said he had brought room service to Boumeddiene and Belhoucine at the hotel.

MEE could not independently verify this information.

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