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| The moment of capture as Abdeslam is snared by armed officers following a tense siege in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3501259/Paris-attacks-suspect-says-SUE-French-prosecutor-revealing-planned-blow-Stade-France.html#ixzz43blXO6BM Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook |
DAILY MAIL
- Salah Abdeslam charged over Paris attacks after being captured alive by police commandos in Belgium.
- He eluded authorities for four months. Mr. Abdeslam, who was transferred to the penitentiary complex in Bruges on Saturday, is believed to be the only direct participant in the attacks who is still alive.
Abdeslam’s attorney, Sven Mary, said that over the weekend, Belgian authorities questioned the suspect, who was wounded in the raid in which he was captured, and said that he was cooperating.
Paris terror suspect 'was planning fresh Brussels attack' when he was caught French prosecutor reveals he backed out of blowing himself up
- This picture shows the dramatic moment the terror suspect was dragged his safehouse in Molenbeek, Brussels
- French authorities said he had formed new network and planned to use 'heavy weapons' for Belgian terror strike.
- The Paris prosecutor confirmed he was supposed to be the fourth suicide bomber at the Stade de France
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WASHINGTON POST
Although a French prosecutor warned reporters to take anything Abdeslam may say “with caution,” Reynders told the Associated Press that Belgian authorities concluded Abdeslam was planning new attacks. Law enforcement agents, he said, “found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons, in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels.”
He reportedly admitted that he intended to carry out a suicide bombing in Paris in November but that he pulled back at the last minute.
Last fall, authorities quickly identified him as the principal planner of the complicated logistics behind November’s attacks, saying he rented the cars his fellow terrorists drove to Paris and arranged accommodations for them in apartments and hotels.
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| French President Francois Hollande, pictured, warned more arrests will come after the capture of Abdeslam as the fight on terror goes on Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3501259/Paris-attacks-suspect-says-SUE-French-prosecutor-revealing-planned-blow-Stade-France.html#ixzz43bm42kTp Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook |
Much of what the authorities already know is in a 55-page report compiled in the weeks after the attack by the French antiterrorism police, presented privately to France’s Interior Ministry; a copy was recently obtained by The New York Times. While much about the Paris attacks has been learned from witnesses and others, the report has offered new perspectives about the plot that had not yet been publicized.
The attackers, sent by the Islamic State’s external operations wing, were well versed in a range of terrorism tactics — including making suicide vests and staging coordinated bombings while others led shooting sprees — to hamper the police response, the report shows. They exploited weaknesses in Europe’s border controls to slip in and out undetected, and worked with a high-quality forger in Belgium to acquire false documents.
The French police report, together with hundreds of pages of interrogation and court records also obtained by The Times, suggest that there are lingering questions about how many others were involved in the terrorist group’s network, how many bomb makers were trained and sent from Syria, and the precise encryption and security procedures that allowed the attackers to evade detection during the three months before they struck.
Taken as a whole, the documents, combined with interviews with officials and witnesses, show the arc of the Islamic State’s growth from a group that was widely viewed as incapable of carrying out large-scale terror assaults. And they suggest that nearly two years of previous, failed attacks overseen by the leader of the Paris assault, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, served as both test runs and initial shots in a new wave of violence the Islamic State leaders have called for in Western Europe and Britain.
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Belgian security forces seal off an area during the anti-terror operation in the Molenbeek neighborhood which snared Abdeslam
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Officials involved in the investigation say that the explosive used in the attacks tested positive for a peroxide-based explosive, triacetone triperoxide, or TATP. It has become the signature explosive for Islamic State operations in Europe, and it can be made with common products — hair bleach and nail polish remover — easily found over the counter across Europe.
“Their ingredients, when combined, are highly unstable and can explode easily if mishandled,” Peter Bergen, the director of the National Securities Studies Program at the New America Foundation, said during recent congressional testimony. “To make an effective TATP bomb requires real training, which suggests a relatively skilled bomb-maker was involved in the Paris plot, since the terrorists detonated several bombs. It also suggests that there was some kind of bomb factory that, as yet, appears to be undiscovered, because putting together such bombs requires some kind of dedicated space.”
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The attacks represented a shift in the Islamic State’s external operations branch that was first publicized in the group’s French-language online magazine, Dar al-Islam, last March.
In the previous small-scale attacks, the Islamic State, much like Al Qaeda before it, had taken aim at symbolic targets, including security installations and establishments with clear links to Israel or Jewish interests, like the Jewish Museum in Brussels. But in an interview published in the online magazine, a senior ISIS operative identified asBoubaker al-Hakim, described as the godfather of French jihadists, advised his followers to abandon the symbolism: “My advice is to stop looking for specific targets. Hit everyone and everything.”
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All the previous attacks by Islamic State fighters dispatched from Syria had relied on a single mode of operation: a shooting, an explosion or an attempted hostage-taking. In Paris, the attackers set off to do all three, realizing that this way they could overwhelm the country’s emergency response.
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According to the police report and interviews with officials, none of the attackers’ emails or other electronic communications have been found, prompting the authorities to conclude that the group used encryption. What kind of encryption remains unknown, and is among the details that Mr. Abdeslam’s capture could help reveal.
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| Gun shots and explosions were heard while white smoke was seen in the area as police moved in on Abdeslam, who had been on the run for 126 days |
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As France was plunged into a state of emergency on the night of the attack, the Islamic State’s external operations branch could claim that it had achieved all its goals. Mr. Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam were still alive. But perhaps that was not part of the plan, because it was then that mistakes appeared, the police report shows....police records show that a 26-year-old woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, began receiving phone calls on her Paris number from callers in Belgium. She was Mr. Abaaoud’s first cousin, according to a close friend who was later questioned by the police and who later talked to French news outlets. Ms. Aitboulahcen was described as being smitten with him for years.
On Nov. 15, she and a friend drove out to a remote spot along the freeway, where Mr. Abaaoud came out of the bushes and joined them, the report said, quoting the account of the friend.
According to the friend’s account to the police, Mr. Abaaoud regaled them with stories about how he had made it to Europe by inserting himself in the stream of migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean. He explained that he was among 90 terrorists who had made it back and who had gone to ground in the French countryside, the friend told the police.
Mr. Abaaoud would spend four days and three nights camped in the bushes, while his cousin returned with cake and water. By the friend’s account, Mr. Abaaoud told Ms. Aitboulahcen that he and an associate would carry out further attacks. Ms. Aitboulahcen was sent to buy the men new suits and dress shoes, the report said, bought with the nearly 5,000 euros the Islamic State’s network had sent via Western Union and an informal money exchange network known as a hawala.
On the night of Nov. 17, Ms. Aitboulahcen secured an apartment in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, chosen because the landlord did not require receipts.
The police raided it early the next morning, with Mr. Abaaoud and his cousin inside. The thundering boom of an explosive vest was recorded by television news crews outside.
Inside, the police again found the components used to make the TATP bombs. In addition to other weapons, they found a Herstal pistol with an empty clip, smeared with Mr. Abaaoud’s DNA, suggesting that he had fought to the end.
His body was found on the building’s third floor, and mixed in with his flesh were ball bearings and fragments of plastic.