Paris’s Hyper Cacher to reopen next week

The Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket in Paris that became the site of a bloody hostage drama during a jihadist attack in January will re-open Sunday, according to a management source.

The kosher shop has been fully renovated and will re-open with new staff, the source said on Friday.

The Hyper Cacher store on the eastern edge of Paris was badly damaged during the attack on January 9, when jihadist Amedy Coulibaly killed four Jewish hostages before he was shot dead when police stormed the building.

His assault came two days after two other jihadists killed 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine.

Hostages (bottom right) flee the Hyper Cacher supermarket as French security forces storm the building, January 9, 2014. (YouTube screenshot)

On Thursday European countries agreed to begin giving extra scrutiny this summer to travelers who meet criteria indicating they could be terrorists or Muslim foreign fighters.

The decision, taken at a meeting of EU interior ministers, was announced by Rihards Kozlovskis, Latvia’s interior minister, who chaired the session.

EU officials said the decision, to go into effect in June, will apply throughout the 26-nation Schengen area, to which 22 EU member states belong.

The four victims of the Paris Hyper Cacher attack, from left to right: Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Francois-Michel Saada, Philippe Braham. (photo credit: Courtesy)

Kozlovskis said the “risk indicators” to be used to single out travelers and their documents for intensive examination are still being drafted by EU officials and member countries.

The EU made fighting terrorism a top priority after the January attacks in Paris. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who represented his country’s government at Thursday’s meeting in Brussels, urged decisive and speedy action.

“Today the fight against terrorism is a fight against time,” Cazeneuve told reporters. “It’s a fight against the clock. And each minute we lose by procrastinating is an additional opportunity that we give to the terrorists to strike.”

According to one estimate, some 4,000 Europeans have left to fight alongside radical Muslim formations in Syria and Iraq since October. EU governments want to prevent them from departing, and also catch them if they return home with the intent of staging terrorist attacks on their home soil.