‘Mastermind’ of Paris attacks in Syria still at large

Police fail to catch key suspect in Brussels raid; Daesh threatens attack on US, other countries; Hollande wants changes in constitution to revoke French citizenship of terrorists, traitors; Paris to intensify attacks against IS; mosque set on fire in Canada
PARIS: A leading Belgian jihadist in Syria, who has boasted in videos about planning attacks in Europe and evaded police in his home country, is being investigated as a possible mastermind of the Paris attacks, a French source said on Monday, while the Islamic State group also known as Daesh has warned of more attacks.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, has fought along the Islamic State group or Daesh in Syria and has been on the run since police stormed a jihadist cell in eastern Belgium’s Verviers in January.
Investigators now see a link with the worst terror attacks in French history, which on Friday night led to the deaths of 129 people and were claimed by Daesh.
“It’s a serious hypothesis,” a French source close to the investigation told AFP, adding that Abaaoud is still living in Syria — large areas of which are IS-controlled.
Abaaoud, who earlier this year was interviewed by IS’s magazine Dabiq, was in contact with at least one of the Abdeslam brothers.
Brahim Abdeslam was one of the suicide attackers in Paris, and his brother Salah is being hunted by police.
“Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam knew each other and were involved in the same petty crimes,” the French source said.
“This element and Abaaoud’s fanaticism in Syria allow us to link him to the attacks,” the source said, warning however that it was still “too early” to make a conclusion.
Meanwhile, in Belgium, police launched a major raid in Brussels targeting fugitive Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam on Monday but the operation ended without any arrests, prosecutors told AFP.
Police meanwhile freed one of his brothers without charge, following his arrest at the weekend in the wake of the attacks in which a third Abdeslam brother took part as a suicide bomber, officials said.
Dozens of officers in balclavas and carrying submachineguns surrounded a house in the run-down immigrant area of Molenbeek in western Brussels, which is increasingly under scrutiny as a hotbed of European militancy.
“The operation is over and the result is negative. No one was arrested,” spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told AFP. The mayor of Molenbeek district where the raid took place also confirmed it was over.
Van Der Sypt had earlier confirmed that the raid targeted Salah Abdeslam — a 26-year-old former Brussels tram worker who is the subject of an international arrest warrant by French police — without saying whether he was in the house.
His brother Mohamed Abdeslam was released “without being charged” by Belgian authorities on Monday along with four other suspects who were among seven people arrested in the wake of the carnage in the French capital, Van Der Sypt said.
Two remain in custody.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said he was not aware of any specific actionable US intelligence in the days and weeks before the Paris terrorist attack. “There were no specific mentions of this particular attack that would give us a sense of something we could provide French authorities or act on ourselves,” Obama told a press conference in Turkey. The president said concerns about potential ISIS attack in the West “have been there for over a year now.”
During an interview on French television, the interior minister of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, called for the dissolution of “mosques where hate is preached” following a string of attacks that left at least 129 people dead across Paris.
The minister has long been an advocate for addressing the concerns of the country’s five million Muslim residents, particularly after January’s attacks at the Charlie Hebdo office. But Cazeneuve has also made significant efforts to curb homegrown extremism. France increased surveillance at religious and cultural centers earlier this year and has been cracking down on supposed radicalization in prisons.
Meanwhile, Daesh warned in a new video on Monday that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack Washington.
The video, which appeared on a site used by Daesh to post its messages, begins with news footage of the aftermath of Friday’s Paris shootings in which at least 129 people were killed.
The message to countries involved in what it called the “crusader campaign” was delivered by a man dressed in fatigues and a turban, and identified in subtitles as Al Ghareeb the Algerian.
“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the centre of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its centre in Washington,” the man said.
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the video, which purports to be the work of IS fighters in the Iraqi province of Salahuddine, north of Baghdad.
The French government has called the Paris attacks an act of war and said it would not end its air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
French fighter jets launched their biggest raids in Syria to date on Sunday targeting the Islamic State’s stronghold in the city of Raqqa.
The operation was carried out in coordination with US forces.
“Al Ghareeb the Algerian” also warned Europe in the video that more attacks were coming.
“I say to the European countries that we are coming, coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and (gun) silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” he said.
Apparently referring to international talks to end the Syrian war, another man identified in the video as Al Karrar the Iraqi tells French President Francois Hollande “we have decided to negotiate with you in the trenches and not in the hotels.”
Meanwhile, in Washington, CIA director John Brennan warned that the attacks in Paris were likely not a “one off event” and that he expects IS has more operations in the pipeline.
“Security and intelligence services right now are working feverishly to see what else they can do in terms of uncovering it,” he said at a Washington think tank.
The CIA chief said Friday night’s attacks by gunmen in suicide vests in the heart of the French capital were carefully planned and executed.
“This was not something done in a matter of days. This is something that was carefully and deliberately planned over the course of several months in terms of whether they had the operatives, the weapons, explosives, suicide belts.
“I would anticipate that this is not the only operation ISIL has in the pipeline,” he said, using an alternate acronym for IS, the militant group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.
French President Francois Hollande, meanwhile, said France would step up the battle against the IS group in Syria in the wake of Paris attacks he dubbed “acts of war”.
Hollande told a special meeting of both houses of parliament in Versailles he would meet US President Barack Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the coming days and called for a UN Security Council meeting over the fight against IS jihadists.
Hollande wants the constitution changed so that the government can revoke the citizenship of convicted terrorists born in France who have dual nationality.
Hollande said that “we must be able to revoke the French citizenship of a person convicted for threatening the nations’ interest or for terrorist acts.”
Under current French law, citizenship revocation can only be applied to people who have been naturalized, if they have dual nationality.
A grave Hollande said the attacks in the French capital that killed 129 people as they enjoyed a Friday night out in bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium, “were acts of war”.
They “were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium and perpetrated on our soil with French complicity”, he said.
In response, France would “intensify” operations in Syria, Hollande said a day after French jets pounded IS targets in the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqa, its first military response to the Paris carnage.
“We will continue the strikes in the weeks to come,” Hollande told lawmakers.
In the fight against the extremists, Hollande said he wanted increased international assistance.
“I will meet in the coming days with US President Obama and President Putin,” he said.
Turning to measures within France, he said he would ask parliament to consider extending a state of emergency by three months.
During pre-dawn raids in the southeastern French city of Lyon, police found “an arsenal of weapons,” including a rocket launcher and Kalashnikov assault rifle.
More than 100 people have been placed under house arrest, 23 arrested and 31 weapons seized, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
As authorities scrambled to find those responsible, the grieving French tried to return to the humdrum of daily life.
Mountains of flowers and candles have been laid at the scenes of the attacks and in front of businesses that lost loved ones.
“We need to understand how this barbarism can exist and why France is paying this heavy price,” David Boy, a 52-year-old advertising agency boss said, his lips trembling as he lingered at one of the memorials on his way to work.
Metro trains were packed with commuters, pupils returned to schools and museums reopened, although a national state of emergency remained in place.
A social media campaign urged everyone to visit cafes and bars on Tuesday night.
In the face of “barbarism... culture is our biggest shield and our artists our best weapon,” said Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin.
The rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, meanwhile, called on all French imams to lead the faithful in Friday prayers for the victims of the country’s worst-ever terror attacks.
“I appeal to imams to take part in a solemn prayer to show our compassion and share in the families’ sorrow,” rector Dalil Boubakeur told reporters.
He was speaking after a minute of silence was observed across France and Europe in honour of the 129 victims of the gun and suicide attacks that rocked Paris at the weekend.
Boubakeur voiced “horror” at the “unspeakable acts” which had targeted “absolutely innocent” Parisians.
“We, Muslims of France, can only insist on the need for national unity in opposing this misfortune which has afflicted us and which attacks indiscriminately,” he said.
“We are all victims of this barbarity,” he said, repeating a call made by religious and political leaders after a series of jihadist attacks in January for people not to tar all Muslims with the same brush of extremism.
The suicide bombers behind Friday’s attacks on the national stadium, a packed concert hall and bars and restaurants were “people who call themselves Muslims but who should, by rights, be called barbarians”, he said.
Boubakeur observed the midday minute of silence on the steps of the Great Mosque, together with a handful of worshippers.
Afterwards, they said a prayer before listening in silence to a rendition of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
Meanwhile, in Canada, a central Ontario mosque was set on fire deliberately in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris and is being investigated as a hate crime, police said Monday.
Murray Rodd, chief of police in Peterborough, Ontario told a news conference that any injury to one of the city’s ethnic communities is “an injury to us all.”
“We are treating this as a hate crime,” Rodd said. “The mosque in question is named – quite appropriately – the peace mosque, which fits into what is a very peaceful, very livable community.”
Inspector Larry Charmley added that other police forces have offered to help solve the case.
The mosque, located in a quiet residential area of Peterborough, was torched on the weekend.