Brussels // One month after the attacks that left 130 dead and hundreds wounded in Paris, several suspected ISIL terrorists are still being hunted in a number of countries.
Seven men were killed by police or their own suicide vests on November 13, the night of the atrocities, and three more people, including the alleged ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, died during a ferocious police assault on a suburban Paris flat five days later.
Investigators are searching for at least two others suspected of helping to plan of the attacks, along with an unknown number of possible accomplices.
At least 16 men have been detained in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Turkey on suspicion of direct or indirect involvement, with the main focus of the inquiry on Belgian and French extremists of Moroccan origin.
At the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were murdered, three terrorists of French nationality were killed. Two of them - Samy Amimour, 28 and Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29 - are believed to have blown themselves up while the third, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, 23, was shot by police, his explosives belt detonating as he hit the ground.
Outside the Stade de France, three bombers were killed by their own suicide devices as France played Germany in a friendly football match. One was Bilal Hadfi, 20, French-born but living in Belgium. The other two have been named as Ahmad Al Mohammad and Mohammad Al Mahmod, but these identities have not been confirmed.
The seventh attacker killed that night was Brahim Abdeslam, 31, a French national born in Brussels, who blew himself up after carrying out machine gun attacks on bar and restaurant terraces. His brother, Salah, 26, is on the run. He was in Paris on the night of the attacks and is sought along with Mohamed Abrini, 29, with whom he had been filmed on a service station’s security cameras while travelling from Belgium to Paris a few days earlier.
Salah’s family has repeatedly urged him to give himself up. It is not yet clear whether his role was logistical or as an intended participant in the attacks, or both.
Abaaoud, 28, the Belgian killed when police stormed the flat in Saint-Denis on November 18, had earlier been named as the suspected ringleader of the attacks. He was already wanted after apparently escaping from a gun battle between police and ISIL terrorists in the Belgian city of Verviers eight days after the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris in January.
Killed in Saint-Denis with Abaaoud was his cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, a French woman of Moroccan origin, who is reported by French media to have become radicalised only in the months preceding the attacks. Prosecutors say she was not a suicide bomber, as initially reported, but died when an explosive belt worn by a third, unidentified suspect in the flat was detonated.
French officials say Abaaoud was preparing imminent attacks, with the Parisian business and shopping complex, La Defence, a probable target. But the nature of Aitboulahcen’s role – whether she was a willing accomplice or acting under duress – remains unclear.
Of those in custody, there is particular interest in Ahmet Dahmani, a 26-year-old Belgian, detained with two Syrians in Turkey three days after the Paris massacres, because of suspicion that he may have helped Salah Abdeslam select attack locations in Paris.
In the French capital, police have also arrested a man named only as Mohamed S, 25, linked by media reports to to Abaaoud. Agence France-Presse says he is accused of “criminal association in relation to a terrorist plot”.
Mohamed S is an acquaintance of the dead woman and of Jawad Bendaoud, who admitted on French television immediately before his own arrest that he owned the flat raided by police. Prosecutors allege that Mohamed S had asked Bendaoud after the Paris attacks to make accommodation available for friends, though Bendaoud insists he knew nothing about a link with the massacres. A third man detained in the Paris region this week is also suspected of playing a “peripheral” role.
In Austria, two people suspected of links with the Paris attackers were arrested during the weekend in a migrants’ shelter in Salzburg, the state prosecutor in Austria said on Wednesday.
Eight men were detained in Belgium in a series of raids and arrests following the Paris attacks. Two of them, Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attouh, 21, are believed to have been stopped in France, having picked up Salah after the attacks, but allowed to drive on. Another, described as Samir Z, 20, a Frenchman, said by prosecutors to be “part of the entourage of Bilal Hadfi”, one of the stadium suicide bombers, was arrested while preparing to fly from Belgium to Morocco.
In Switzerland, two Syrians were arrested in Geneva last Friday and traces of explosives found in their car, according to Swiss media. The city’s United Nations compound was said to be on maximum alert amid unconfirmed reports that police had been searching for two others.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* with additional reporting from agencies
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