2 Die as French Police Seek Paris Attacks Leader; 7 Arrested in Raid

DAILY MAIL

The mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud (right), 27, grew up in Brussels, where his father owned a flourishing second-hand business. Neighbours remember him as 'a fine young boy' who made his parents proud. He attended private school, and was set up in a second family business by his father. But it all went downhill in his teenage years, when he started a life of petty crime which escalated rapidly into prison time. By his mid-20s he joined ISIS in Syria (left, pictured left), taking his 13-year-old brother Younes (inset) with him to become ISIS's youngest known recruit. When Abaaoud's family heard reports last autumn that he had been 'martyred', they prayed that the rumors were true.

NY TIMES




WASHINGTON POST

French security forces mobilized Wednesday on a surprising lead: the man considered to be the ringleader of the Paris attacks — an Islamic State operative and puppet master of its effort to terrorize Europe — was potentially hiding out right under the noses of French intelligence.

Officials would not yet say whether Abdelhamid Abaaoud — a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent who cajoled his own 13-year old brother into fighting in Syria — was among the two dead and seven arrested after a seven-hour siege in Paris’s Saint-Denis district.

[The hunt for Abaaoud: A top, a raid, a deadly siege]

But if Abaaoud is found to have been hiding out among the churches and shops in the multicultural and historic neighborhood, it would mean the stealthy operative had somehow managed to slip past security nets and return from the battlefields of the Middle East.

His death or capture would bring a measure of justice to the French investigation of Friday’s bloodshed. But Abaaoud’s possible ability to successfully traverse the porous borders of Europe would also suggest just how large a security threat the continent is now facing.

“The question is whether he and other cell members might have used the environment of thousands of refugees to slip back into Europe and especially France,” the official said. “For now, we are all trying to figure out if there might be more cells.”

At least two of the men believed to be directly involved in the Paris attacks — including Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old who is still on the run — had years-long connections to him and came from his same hardscrabble neighborhood in Brussels that has become a breeding ground for European jihadist


HUFFINGTON POST