The family of a small boy dramatically rescued after dangling from a balcony in Paris, France have expressed their thanks to the Malian man who saved him.
“He’s truly a hero,” the boy’s grandmother said of migrant Mamoudou Gassama, who scaled four floors to pluck the child from danger.
The four-year-old’s father, who had left him in their flat and gone shopping, faces charges of failing to look after his child, reports say.
Mr Gassama will be given citizenship.
French President Emmanuel Macron personally thanked him, gave him a medal for courage and said he would also be offered a role in the fire service.
Who is Mamoudou Gassama?
The 22-year-old left the town of Yaguine in south-western Mali as a teenager in 2013.
He took the migrant route across the Sahara desert through Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya, and crossed the Mediterranean to Italy in 2014 at the second attempt after having once been intercepted at sea by police.
“I had no means to live and no-one to help me,” Mr Gassama told Mr Macron.
During his journey, he spent a year working in Libya, where migrants are frequently exploited and even enslaved by gangs.
“I suffered a lot. We were caught and beaten but I did not lose hope,” he said.
■ ‘Used as a slave’ in a Libyan detention centre
He told Mr Macron that he had travelled to France because he did not know anyone in Italy and his brother had been living in France for many years.
In Paris he worked cash-in-hand on building sites and lived in a hostel in the western suburb of Montreuil – known as “little Bamako” because of its large Malian population. He had not applied for asylum and was living illegally in France.
In the hostel, he has been sharing a room with relatives and sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
On Monday Mr Gassama met another Malian migrant given French citizenship for his acts of courage – Lassana Bathily, who helped customers in a Jewish supermarket in western Paris hide when a supporter of the Islamic State group took hostages there in 2015.
■ Muslim tells of hiding Jewish shoppers
Mr Bathily, who has written a book about his experience, said Mr Gassama was “still in a state of emotion” following his daring rescue.
“He asked me about my experience and what I went through during the attack to get some advice,” Mr Bathily told BFMTV. “We weren’t in it for anything but afterwards everyone was interested in us.
“He reacted like a human being. He didn’t think it would become a media event.”
On Tuesday Mr Gassama received French residency, a first step towards citizenship. He also signed a contract for an internship with the Paris fire service.
Source: BBC news
