Paris attacks mastermind seems to have entered France as refugee in disguise

Paris attacks mastermind seems to have entered France as refugee in disguise. November. 21, 2015 10:54. raphy@donga.com.

How was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, mastermind of Paris terrorist attack who was shot to death during police operation on Wednesday, able to enter France from Syria? A Belgian of Moroccan origin, he was known to have run away when he was caught while planning a terrorist attack in Belgium immediately after the attack in the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January.

However, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says on Thursday that the intelligence was obtained from the national intelligence agency of a nation that is not a member of EU that Abaaoud had recently stayed in Greece. Given this news, the presumption that he came into Paris as a “refugee in disguise” among other refugees after he had stayed in Greece, not in Syria, is gaining credibility. French national intelligence agency found his presence in Paris only after the devastating attacks took place.

Even with loopholes in crackdown, Abaaoud was able to be tracked down thanks to terrorists` mobile phones that were found outside the Bataclan theatre immediately after the attacks. “Text messages of terrorists and contact information of Hasna Ait Boulahcen (aged 26, died in suicide bombing) were in the phones, which enabled us to make a raid into the Saint Denis apartment where she used to live,” sources from the French intelligence agency said.

The CNN reported on Friday that Abaaoud’s father told he could be relieved to know his son`s death and he thinks his son was a "psychopath" and a "devil.” Through his lawyer, the father said that he thinks his son was radicalized in 2013, coming to this belief when Abdelhamid Abaaoud told him to stop educating his second son, Younes, in a "European style” and took the brother to Syria and joined the IS. The father added that he even sued his son in charge of kidnapping his second son. In the meantime, acquaintances of Ait Boulahcen who died in her apartment say that she was a heavy drinker and smoker who enjoyed parties at nightclubs. They added that she rarely read Quran or went to Mosque to pray.

Mohammed Khoualed (aged 19, photo), who is known to have made suicide bomb vest used for Paris attacks, surrendered to the police on Wednesday night in the northern city of Lille.