French police have said they are hunting a second fugitive who was directly involved in the Paris terror attacks.
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France has issued an arrest warrant for 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who was identified as the alleged driver of a auto that delivered attackers to the scene of greatest slaughter, a rock concert inside a nightclub in which 89 died.
The official cited chatter from IS figures that Abaaoud had recommended a concert as an ideal target for inflicting maximum casualties, as well as electronic communications between Abaaoud and one of the Paris attackers who blew himself up. Such is the concern that he poses a threat to his home city while still at liberty that authorities cancelled a soccer global match against Spain that was to be played on Tuesday. However, Iraqi intelligence officials have told The Associated Press their sources indicated 19 people participated in the Paris attacks and five others provided hands-on logistical support.
“My sense is everybody understands that with Lebanon’s attacks, with what’s happened in Egypt, with Ankara, Turkey and attacks in Paris, we have to step up our efforts to hit them at the core where they’re planning these things and also obviously to do more on borders in terms the movement of people”, he said.
Their defense lawyers said they could not confirm those reports.
Rouhani pointed the “crucial importance to fight against terrorism and Daesh with all our might”, the official says, speaking anonymously in line with government policy.
Mohammed Amri, 27, denies any involvement in the Paris attacks and says he went to Paris to collect his friend, according to his defence lawyer Xavier Carrette. Amri drove the 280 km (180 miles) to Paris through the night with Attouh to fetch him in his VW Golf.
“You know, when you’re on a vehicle journey, you can talk about everything and nothing, listen to music, even smoke a joint, but at no time, No, they didn’t talk about that”, Carette said.
The fact they were stopped three times by police did not raise his client’s suspicions about Abdeslam, he said – young Arab men got used to that from the police, Carette suggested. The men are from the Molenbeek district of Brussels, a poor neighbourhood that is home to many Muslim immigrant families and long a focus of investigations into radical Islamists.
Belgian authorities have also established links with the jihadist cell that police smashed in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers in January.
Also this year, he was convicted in absentia of recruiting fighters for Syria. For its population, far more Belgians than any other European nationality have joined in the Syrian war.
Abaaoud, who in July was sentenced in absentia by a Belgian court to 20 years in prison, was in contact with at least one of the Abdeslam brothers. Public documents show they sold it on September 30. It invoked an article of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty that has never been used, which states nations must provide assistance when one of its members falls victim to “armed aggression”.
Prosecutors on Sunday disclosed a growing Belgian connection to the Paris attacks as Premier Charles Michel conceded that a Brussels neighborhood is a “gigantic problem” given its past links to worldwide terrorism.
“He said it was right, that we had to end freedom of speech, that we had to stop insulting religion”, Stacino said. He said attacking militants in Iraq and Syria was a start, but it won’t necessarily undermine the group’s ability to strike around the globe.
In Paris, harrowing accounts of survival continued to emerge, particularly from the Bataclan theater, where three attackers shot into the fleeing crowd.
Al Jazeera’s David Chater, reporting from Paris, said about 200 members of police tactical units surrounded an address in Toulouse and ammunition and a large amount of cash were found at one of the locations.
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“No robes, no beards”. “You can’t imagine the guy wanted to kill so many people and what he wanted to do”.
