You could call him the ringleader of the bloody attacks in Paris. Or call him a proud member of ISIS, who went to Syria and returned to Europe determined to sow fear.
Whatever label you ascribe to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, put it in the past tense. Because he won’t inflict terror any longer.
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced Thursday that the bullet-ridden body found after a raid Wednesday on an apartment building in a northern Paris suburb, was Abaaoud, the Belgian national who orchestrated shootings and bombings that took 129 lives and wounded hundreds more last week.
Authorities had zeroed in on that location in Saint-Denis after picking up phone conversations indicating Abaaoud’s relative might be there, a Belgian counterterrorism official said. But while residents of that Paris suburb told CNN they’d seen Abaaoud himself out recently and at a local mosque, authorities didn’t know for sure where he was.
It turns out Abaaoud was in that building in Saint-Denis.
Police fired around 5,000 rounds of ammunition in an hour-long gunfight with the apartment’s occupants early Wednesday and used powerful munitions that spurred a floor to collapse. Five officers suffered slight wounds, while a police dog and two suspected terrorists died.
One was a female suicide bomber and Abaaoud’s cousin, according to Belgian state broadcaster RTBF. The Paris prosecutor’s office identified the other as Abaaoud through papillary prints, which include patterns on fingers, palms and the soles of the feet.
Authorities don’t know if police killed Abaaoud or he killed himself. Regardless, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said about the Saint-Denis raid, “The target was achieved.”
Belgian authorities conduct raids tied to Paris suspect
Abaaoud’s death, though, does not mean investigators’ work is over. Far from it.
For one, at least one Paris terror suspect, Salah Abdeslam, is at large. And the threat from ISIS, which boasted about the attacks and threatened more worldwide, remains very real.
Abdeslam is one of two brothers allegedly involved in Friday’s coordinated attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, outside the French national soccer stadium and at restaurants in Paris. Though he’s a French national, he was born in Belgium.
That’s one of several connections between this latest attack and Belgium, a country seen as fertile ground for jihadist recruiters. It’s where members of a suspected terror cell waged a deadly gun battle in January with police and also where three Americans in August overpowered a radical Islamist gunman on a Paris-bound train.
It was also home to Abaaoud, a man once involved in gangs in Molenbeek. Belgian special operations forces raided that impoverished Brussels suburb, which has a history of links to terror plots, on Monday.
Thursday, Belgian authorities detained nine in raids around that country, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said. Seven of those people were questioned after six raids around Brussels related to Bilal Hadfi, one of those who blew himself up outside the Stade de France.
And in Aulnay-sous-Bois, on the northeast outskirts of Paris, police searched the home of the mother of the woman who blew herself up in the Saint-Denis apartment building raid, Paris prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said.
Suspects appeared ‘prepared to act’
While they have named Abaaoud, authorities have not yet identified the woman who died with him or the eight detained in connection with the Saint-Denis operation.
Whoever those inside the apartment were, the suspects appeared ready to launch more attacks, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday — noting their weaponry, structured organization and determination.
Officials are piecing together where the terrorists were leading up to the attacks, and with whom they had contact. They also want to talk to anyone associated with them, or perhaps others who are planning more attacks.
Still, while many were sought after last week’s bloodshed, Abaaoud had been the top priority.
Belgian authorities knew he’d gone to Syria, but didn’t realize he’d returned to Europe, according to a counterterrorism official in that country. France only learned as much after last Friday’s carnage, after receiving information from Morocco’s intelligence agency, a source close to the Paris probe said. (Abaaoud is of Moroccan descent.)
In fact, Abaaoud had bragged in the past of being able to move between Syria and Europe at will. And Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez said Thursday that Abaaoud used social media to recruit Spanish citizens — especially women — to join ISIS, although not necessarily to conduct attacks in that country.
Western intelligence agencies reportedly tried to target Abaaoud in the months prior to the Paris attacks, without success.
He was a target because he was not a passive player: Cazeneuve claimed Abaaoud “played a decisive role” in the Paris attacks and played a part in four of six terror attacks foiled since spring, with one alleged jihadist claiming Abaaoud had trained him personally.
Attacker’s cell phone found in trash bin
Investigators have discovered at least one piece of evidence that could help them in their search: One of the attacker’s cell phones was found in a trash bin outside the Bataclan concert hall, where most of Friday’s victims were gunned down.
A message on the phone, according to Molins, said, “On est parti, on commence,” which translates to “We’ve left, we’re starting.”
Authorities are trying to determine who the recipient of that message was, he said.
President Francois Hollande held up Wednesday’s deadly clash in Saint-Denis as further proof that France is “at war” with ISIS, which is notorious for brutally imposing its warped interpretation of Islam on the millions of people living in the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq.
Authorities are using the state of emergency declared by Hollande to carry out a widespread clampdown on potential terrorist threats, detaining dozens of people, putting more than 100 others under house arrest and seizing an alarming array of weapons.
At the President’s request, France’s lower house voted Thursday to extend this state of emergency for three more months. The bill now goes to the French upper house, or Senate, for an expected vote Friday.
France wants wider coalition against ISIS
The Paris attacks and ISIS’ claim of bringing down a Russian passenger jet over Egypt last month have underscored the extremist group’s desire to expand the reach of its terror.
Already part of the U.S-led coalition that’s bombing ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, France has stepped up its airstrikes on the militants in recent days.
Hollande said he would appeal to world leaders to form a wider coalition to go after ISIS, including meeting next week with U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has taken military action in Syria independently of the U.S.-led coalition, attacking ISIS but also other groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Moscow.
And France’s interior minister, Cazeneuve, will press the case for more concerted European action — including bolstering borders — during an upcoming European Union justice council meeting in Brussels. Measures taken thus far, the minister said Thursday, haven’t been implemented fast enough or don’t go far enough.
Talking to French lawmakers Thursday about extending that country’s state of emergency, Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that not taking steps to combat ISIS could have dire consequences. For proof, he pointed to their history of executions, bombings, beheadings and added that the use of chemical and biological weapons can’t be ruled out.
“The way they are killing is constantly evolving,” Valls said. “The grim imagination of those giving the orders has no limit.”