So was his brother Salah – a decision that Belgian authorities say was based on scant evidence that either man had terrorist intentions.
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November 13: Seven dead assailants played direct roles in the November 13 attacks: three at the Bataclan concert hall, three outside the Stade de France stadium and one in the cafe killings. In one incident, police fired on a vehicle that was later found in Brussels, but it was not clear, van der Sypt said, if it was linked to the case. The warning went unheeded. Paris answered last week, after the attacks. At least one suspected participant remains at large. He was moving freely, often hanging out in the street with the lads from the neighborhood.
The call is going out on social media under the Twitter hashtag 21h20 – or 9:20 p.m., the time the attacks began on November 13. “Europe owes it to all victims of terrorism and those who are close to them”.
“We’re in a situation where the services are overrun”. The immigrant link may or may not prove valid, but an even more damning piece of evidence has arisen against Schengen: the Belgian connection.
In Syria, meanwhile, a monitoring group said at least 36 people were killed in air strikes by Russian and Syrian jets in the IS-controlled eastern Deir Ezzor province, describing them as the heaviest in the region since the start of the civil war. The lawyer of one of the men who picked him up said her client had noticed he was “extremely nervous” as they drove back to Brussels, being pulled over and let go three times by French police.
A European Union official says members have agreed to “considerably strengthen” means for the 28 nations to co-operate to combat violent extremism.
As the number of those fighters has increased, authorities have struggled to keep up. The French Interior Ministry estimated about 500 French nationals had travelled to Syria and nearly 300 had returned.
The metro station where Abaaoud was seen is not far from where police later found a Seat vehicle believed used by the attackers.
A video of a father in Paris calming his young son, who is anxious about the “bad guys”, gets tens of millions of views online.
The attacks killed 130 people at various locations, including the Bataclan concert hall where 89 concert-goers were gunned down or blown up.
Another team blew themselves up outside the Stade de France where President Francois Hollande was watching a friendly match between France and Germany.
Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old woman who was Abaaoud’s cousin, and a third unidentified person were also killed.
Abaaoud himself had been well-known to authorities for several years.
French jets launch their biggest raids in Syria to date, hitting the Islamic State stronghold in Raqqa. By this time, he knew he was being sought.
USA and French Special Forces support Malian soldiers, who free the captives; 27 people are reported dead. Although he had eight convictions as a petty criminal, he had never been in prison, a place French authorities can watch for signs of radicalization.
Police say they suspected him of being in Syria between late 2013 and early 2014, before returning to France unnoticed. By all appearances, France seems to be on the verge of becoming a closely watched state in the coming years – much like the United Kingdom, which has one surveillance camera in place for every 11 Britons.
The official, who can not be named because of Turkish government rules that bar officials from speaking to reporters without prior authorization, said in an emailed message: “We believe that Dahmani was in contact with the terrorists who perpetrated the Paris attacks”. “We followed all global procedures”. He is reported as having arrived in Turkey from Amsterdam last Saturday.
Was he supposed to carry out an attack in the 18th?
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If people take the new alert seriously, Brussels will effectively be “shut down” Saturday, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said. Adding to this problem, France has experienced other terrorist attacks this year, most notably in January when gunmen attacked the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, and people expected the government to have learned from these experiences in addressing security threats.
