French controversial comedian Dieudonné, who has several convictions for making anti-Semitic remarks and jokes, has been placed under investigation by the Paris prosecutor for “inciting terrorism” after he posted a comment on Facebook that appeared to sympathise with the gunmen who killed four Jews in a kosher supermarket last Friday.
"Tonight, as far as I'm concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly", he wrote in a post that has since been deleted from his Facebook page.
The comment was a play on “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), the phrase that has become a rallying cry following the massacre of 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday. But it uses the last name of Amédy Coulibaly – the Islamist gunman who murdered four people at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in eastern Paris.
Coulibaly, who prosecutors say was also behind the fatal shooting of a policewoman in the French capital on Thursday, was killed when police stormed the supermarket and freed the surviving hostages.
He is believed to have acted in coordination with Said and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings, who were also killed in a police raid Friday.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who visited the heart of Paris’s Jewish quarter on Monday, described Dieudonné's remarks as "contemptible".