Officials connect Paris assailants to Isis 'guru'

Abdelhamid Abaaoud boasted of slipping by border officials. Photo /AP

Notorious Isis figure tied to two assailants and may have helped recruit others

On the night of January 2, Belgian authorities closing in on a terror cell in the town of Verviers intercepted a telling piece of intelligence. Homegrown terrorists were plotting to gun down police officers, and they discussed their plans by phone with a superior in Athens - a Belgian man whom authorities believed to be a puppet master in Isis' effort to terrorise Europe.

Acting on a request from Belgian intelligence, Greek officials raided an apartment in the middle-class Pangrati district of Athens, hauling in suspects and bagging the cellphone used in that call. But fingerprinting soon revealed that the Greeks had the wrong men. Once again, Abdelhamid Abaaoud had slipped through the fingers of European intelligence.

French authorities now think Abaaoud, a 28-year-old of Moroccan descent who recruited his own 13-year-old brother to fight for Isis (Islamic State), was a "guru" behind the massacre that unfolded at a stadium, concert hall and bars and restaurants in Paris on Saturday, killing 129 people and wounding more than 300. Officials are beginning to piece together a network of attackers with ties that radiated back to him.

Abaaoud, two European officials familiar with the case said, is thought to have arrived in Syria sometime in 2013 or 2014 and slipped in and out of Europe since. He is now thought to be back in Syria. At least two of the men thought to be directly involved in the Paris attacks had years-long connections to him and came from his same hardscrabble neighbourhood in Brussels that has become a breeding ground for European jihadists.

The sinewy, bearded Isis operative, officials say, may also have been directly involved in the recruitment of other assailants in Saturday's attacks, and he was actively involved in several other attempts this year to stage terror in Europe. In August, a French foreign fighter arrested after his return to France told intelligence officials that Abaaoud had instructed him to strike at densely populated targets, including a "concert hall".

The focus on Abaaoud emerged as a manhunt was still under way to find Salah Abdeslam, 26. French authorities think he had a role in the attacks; his older brother, Brahim, 31, blew himself up at a Paris restaurant on Saturday.

Authorities have now identified five of the seven dead assailants from the assault, including at least four French nationals, some whom lived in Belgium, who are thought to have fought in Syria. Samy Amimour, 28, lived in a northeastern Paris suburb. In June 2014, his father, Azzedine, 67, travelled to Syria to try to bring his son back but was unsuccessful.

Intelligence officials think Brahim Abdeslam, a French national who spent time in Molenbeek, Brussels, where Abaaoud is said to have conducted Isis recruiting, is believed to have gone to Syria via Turkey on January 27, 2015, then returned sometime in February. His brother Salah was detained in Greece in August on suspicion of attempting to travel to Syria. But one European intelligence official said he may have gone to Greece to meet an operative from Isis.

Authorities said that two other assailants - Bilal Hadfi, 20, and Ismael Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old former petty criminal - also spent time fighting in Syria.

But a French official familiar with the case described Abaaoud as the "centrepiece" seeming to unite the attackers.

Abaaoud has been linked by authorities to several foiled terrorist plots in France and Belgium over the past two years, including the attempted attack in August on a Paris-bound TGV train from Amsterdam that was thwarted with the aid of a group of Americans.

In an interview with Dabiq, the Isis magazine, in February Abaaoud boasted of effortlessly slipping back into Syria from Europe.

"I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance! This was nothing but a gift from Allah."

The Paris suspects

Dead

Ismail Omar Mostefai, 29, Frenchman of Algerian descent involved in Bataclan concert hall attack. Name was put on French intelligence services' "S notice" in 2010 for reported radicalisation. Investigators suspect he went to Syria in 2013.

Samy Amimour, 28, Frenchman involved in Bataclan attack. Subject of international arrest warrant since 2013. Had been under official investigation since October 2012 on suspicion of terrorism-related activity over a plan to go to Yemen. Believed to have gone to Syria in 2013.

Brahim Abdeslam, 31, Brother of Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect who is still at large. Frenchman but resident of Belgium. Blew himself up at Comptoir Voltaire cafe in Paris.

Bilal Hadfi, 20, Suicide bomber involved in Stade de France attack.

Ahmad al Mohammad, 25 from Idlib, northwest Syria. Suicide bomber involved in Stade de France attack. Passport being checked but fingerprints match up with print of a person registered under that name in Greece in October 2015.

At large

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the attacks. Belgian resident of Molenbeek district of Brussels. Media in Belgium said Abaaoud had been involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium foiled by the police in January.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, French, born in Brussels. Suspected of having rented black VW Polo car used in attacks in Paris.

Arrested

In Belgium two of seven people arrested were detained on terrorism charges. Mohammad Abdeslam, brother of Salah and Brahim (dead), was among five released after preliminary questioning.