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'Spider-Man' of Paris to get French citizenship after rescuing child 'Spider-Man' of Paris to get French citizenship after child rescue
(about 4 hours later)
A Malian migrant hailed as a hero for scaling a building in Paris to save a four-year-old child hanging from a balcony is to be granted French citizenship. As an undocumented migrant in France, Mamoudou Gassama knew it was best to keep his head down, to not draw attention to himself.
Mamoudou Gassama took just seconds to reach the child in a rescue captured on film and viewed millions of times online. But when he spotted a young child dangling from the balcony of a fourth-floor Paris flat he felt he had to act.
After meeting Gassama at the Élysée Palace on Monday morning, President Emmanuel Macron thanked the 22-year-old and said he would be made a naturalised citizen. Macron also said he would be given a role as a volunteer firefighter. In that split second, Gassama, 22, did not think of himself or the threat of discovery and deportation back to Mali.
Gassama told the French broadcaster BFMTV that when he saw the child clinging on to the fourth-floor balcony, “I did not think, I saved him”. Instead, in an extraordinary feat of strength and bravery that has earned him the nickname “Le Spider-Man”, he pulled himself up from balcony to balcony, before lifting the crying four-year-old to safety.
He said: “When I took him in my arms, I spoke with him and asked: ‘Why did you do that?’ But he did not answer.” On Monday, after the video footage went viral and Gassama was hailed a hero, attention quickly turned to his status as one of the country’s many migrants sans papiers (without papers), who have no official access to housing or jobs, and no right to remain in France.
The incident took place at about 8pm on Saturday in northern Paris. Far from being thrown out of France, however, Gassama found himself sitting with President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace.
Footage of the rescue shows Gassama pulling himself up the building from balcony to balcony as a man tries to hold on to the child. He was promised documents allowing him to stay, and a fast-track process to gain French nationality. He was also offered a job with the Paris sapeurs pompiers, the city’s fire and emergency service.
On reaching the fourth floor, Gassama puts one leg over the balcony before reaching out with his right arm and grabbing the child. Macron gave Gassama a medal for an act of “bravery and devotion”, signed by the police prefect and declaring the French Republic’s gratitude.
Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the child had already been rescued. Filmed in the gilded reception room of the palace, Gassama hesitantly described seeing the child hanging on to the balcony railing at around 8pm on Saturday when he was on his way out. He had acted “without thinking”, he said.
“Luckily, there was someone who was physically fit and who had the courage to go and get the child,” a fire service spokesman said. “There were people shouting and honking their horns … I didn’t think of anything, I ran across the road directly to save him. Thank God I saved him.”
Tracked down by reporters a day later, Gassama said he had acted without thinking. “I saw all these people shouting and cars sounding their horns. I climbed up like that and, thank God, I saved the child,” he said. He said he only realised what he had done after he hauled the child to safety.
“I felt afraid when I saved the child ... [when] we went into the living room, I started to shake, I could hardly stand up, I had to sit down.” “My legs went wobbly when I got inside the flat,” he said.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, praised Gassama on Twitter for his “act of bravery” and phoned him to “thank him warmly”. She described him as the “Spider-Man of the 18th”, referring to the Paris district where the rescue happened. “Bravo,” Macron replied.
“He explained to me that he had arrived from Mali a few months ago dreaming of building his life here,” she said. “I told him that his heroic act is an example to all citizens and that the city of Paris will obviously be very keen to support him in his efforts to settle in France.” Gassama, who has nine brothers and sisters, told BFM TV that when he had the child in his arms he asked “why did you do that?”. But the child did not say anything. Gassama said he only fully realised what he had done when he was in the apartment, looking down.
According to initial inquiries by the authorities, the child’s parents were not at home when the incident occurred. The father was questioned by police for having left his child unattended and was due in court later, a judicial source said. The child’s mother was not in Paris at the time. Gassama was accompanied to the palace by his brother Diaby. Asked if he had anything to say to the president, Gassama seemed overwhelmed, so Diaby replied: “We want to be officialised. We have no papers but we want them so we can work in good conditions and we need homes.”
Diaby said his brother was living in temporary housing. “It’s a bad situation but we live with it. We will take the opportunity to ask [the president] for this.”
Afterwards, faced with a barrage of television cameras and journalists, Gassama seemed lost for words.
“He gave me a present,” he said of Macron. “It’s the first time I’ve had anything like this. I’m very happy.”
Macron tweeted that in recognition of Gassama’s “heroic act”, his status in France would be made official with a carte de séjour (residency card) “as quickly as possible”. The president also invited Gassama – who has been living without official papers in Paris since he arrived from Mali in September – to put in a request for naturalisation.
The interior minister, Gérard Collomb, confirmed that he would personally ensure Gassama’s request would be accepted.
The government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux tweeted: “This act of immense bravery, faithful to the values of solidarity of our republic, should open the door to him to our national community.”
The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and her deputies vowed to help the young man in his attempts to remain in France.
In the footage recorded from the street, a man and woman in the neighbouring flat can be seen spotting the boy from their balcony. The man grabs the child’s right arm but appears unable to pull him to safety because of a dividing wall between the balconies.
Gassama said he asked the child how he came to be hanging from the balcony in the 18th arrondissement in the north of Paris.
“He didn’t answer. I asked where his mother was and he said she had gone to a party,” he told journalists.
Le Figaro newspaper reported that the boy’s father had been taken into police custody and was to appear in court later on Monday. The hearing is expected to be opened and adjourned for further investigation. Police said the child’s mother was not in Paris at the time of the incident and the boy was now in the care of social services.
On Monday, the deputy president of the far-right Front National, Nicolas Bay, sounded a more cynical note about Gassama’s residency status. “If you tell me, we’ll make that one official because of his act of bravery and we’ll expel all the others’, I’ll sign up to that,” Bay told France 2 television.
Only a handful of undocumented migrants have their status regularised in France for acts of public service or “exceptional talent”. In 2015, Lassana Bathily, also from Mali, was given asylum after helping hostages taken by the terrorist Amedy Coulibaly at the Hyper-Cacher supermarket, and assisting police and special forces to end the siege.
The French documentary maker and commentator Raphaël Glucksmann wrote on his Facebook page: “Like everyone else, I admire the bravery of Mamoudou Gassama. But I dream of a country where it won’t be necessary to put one’s own life at risk scaling a building to save the life of a child in order to be treated like a human being when one is a migrant.”
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