Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Alleged Mastermind of Paris Attacks, Was ‘Emir of War’ in Syria Belgian drew on ties in Europe long before Paris strikes, officials say
http://www.wsj.com/articles/alleged-mastermind-of-paris-attacks-was-emir-of-war-in-syria-1447907485
By David Gauthier-Villars and Stacy Meichtry in Paris and Matt Bradley in Beirut
PARIS—In targeting Abdelhamid Abaaoud in a raid, French authorities aimed to remove from Islamic State’s ranks a prominent figure who they said blended his battlefield experience in Syria with a network of associates in Europe to mastermind one of the bloodiest terror attacks in French history.
In Syria, the Belgian was a military commander, or “emir of war,” in eastern Deir Ezzour province, according to local activists and news reports, an unusually high rank for a fighter who hailed from Europe. Friends from his early life in Brussels, in the predominantly Muslim district of Molenbeek, recall a “nice guy” who played soccer.
In Paris, officials say the 28-year-old militant assembled a potent arsenal that he planned to deploy against multiple additional targets—including Paris’ La Defense business district—following the attacks that investigators say he coordinated against a stadium, concert hall and other locales, killing 129 people.
A look at the 27-year-old Belgian citizen suspected by French authorities of having a role in the Paris terror attacks, and who they also believe masterminded failed attacks on a high-speed train and a church. Mark Kelly reports.
Its strength was on full display Wednesday in an hourslong resistance to a raid in search of him in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. French police late Wednesday were working to establish if Mr. Abaaoud was among those killed in the action.
Mr. Abaaoud’s ease in allegedly shuttling between Europe’s cobblestoned capitals and the killing fields of Syria shows how Islamic State has evolved from a militia focused on building a caliphate to an international terror syndicate with the command-and-control capability to direct terror attacks on the West from its territory.
“He operates on the ground and he plans abroad,” said Hassan Hassan, a fellow at the U.K.-based think tank Chatham House and co-author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.”
“ISIS has now brought together a global terrorism organization and a state-building project or conventional army on the ground,” Mr. Hassan said.
In Europe, Mr. Abaaoud drew upon a vast network of radicals and extremists long before the Paris strikes, officials say, guiding militants such as Mehdi Nemmouche, a French national and alleged former Islamic State jailer who returned to the continent allegedly to launch the May 2014 assault rifle attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium, killing four people.
Mr. Nemmouche, who was charged by a Belgian court last year with murder in a terrorist context, has acknowledged traveling to Syria but has declined to comment on the Brussels killings, according to his lawyer.
In recent months, Western intelligence regarded Mr. Abaaoud as such a large threat that they mounted unsuccessful attempts to kill him in airstrikes.
In December 2010, Mr. Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam, who allegedly drove militants during Friday’s attack and escaped, were convicted on charges unrelated to terrorism in the same case and sent to prison—a place where people are often radicalized in Europe. In January 2011, the two men were released. Mr. Abdeslam’s brother, Brahim, blew himself up in the Paris attacks Friday, authorities say.
Mr. Abaaoud’s family came from Morocco, prospering in Molenbeek as owners of a clothing store. Until 2013, Mr. Abaaoud, who studied at Brussels’ prestigious Collège Saint-Pierre, was closely associated with his parents’ retail business; he was its largest shareholder in 2013 and presided over board meetings, according to corporate records.
“He was just a normal guy, part of the community,” said a neighbor who lived all his life next to the Abaaoud family residence.
At the start of 2014, however, he headed for Syria where he was assigned to menial tasks by Islamic State, according to active and former French security officials. Early that year, French news magazine Paris Match published photos and videos shot by Islamic State militants that its reporters had collected through Syrian rebels. One of the videos shows a militant driving a pick-up truck toward a grave and dragging half a dozen corpses behind.
“Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with presents for the holidays in Morocco. Now, thank God, we’re towing those who are fighting us, those who are fighting Islam,” the driver says, smiling at the camera.
The driver was later formally identified as Mr. Abaaoud, according to a retired security official. The video, the official said, appears to have helped the Belgian man become a public face of Islamic radicalism in Europe, and gain more visibility inside the extremist organization.
Months later, in summer 2014, a photo of one of Mr. Abaaoud’s siblings who had gone missing suddenly appeared on social networks. Younes Abaaoud, who was 13 years old at the time, is seen holding an assault rifle and standing by another Belgian jihadist, according to French security officials. The boy, a lawyer for his father said, had been taken to Syria by Mr. Abaaoud at the start of the year.
The Abaaoud parents, devastated, decided to leave Belgium, according to a caretaker at their Molenbeek house.
Mr. Abaaoud was initially tasked with luring Francophone jihadists to Islamic State, according to French officials. But he quickly ascended Islamic State’s hierarchy thanks to his successes in military operations in Syria and Iraq, according to Islamic State fighters in Deir Ezzour and activists living there.
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An activist who is based in Deir Ezzour said that Mr. Abaaoud’s appointment as the top military commander in the area came at the request of Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the spokesman for the militant group known for releasing an audio message that called on militants to kill Americans and Europeans, “especially the spiteful and filthy French.”
Western officials say Mr. Abaaoud was eventually assigned to a bigger role: to organize attack missions in Europe.
Mr. Nemmouche, the alleged Jewish Museum gunman in Brussels, crossed paths with Mr. Abaaoud in Islamic State camps, receiving specific instructions from him, the officials said.
The ascension of Mr. Abaaoud in the Islamic State apparatus caught the attention of Western counterterrorism agencies.
At the end of 2014, they homed in on a phone call Mr. Abaaoud placed from Athens, according to the French officials. European authorities now faced a troubling reality, one official said: Islamic State operatives had little difficulty in piercing Europe’s borders.
That fear materialized in January when three gunmen—one of whom is believed to have trained in Yemen—attacked the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a kosher grocery in Paris, killing 17 people.
With Mr. Abaaoud possibly on the loose in Europe, Belgian authorities took no chances. Days after the January attacks in Paris, Belgian police conducted 10 raids, killing two people in a firefight in the town of Verviers.
“There is no established connection with the French attacks,” Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at the time, “But they have led us to accelerate some initiatives at home.”
Officials believe Mr. Abaaoud escaped to Syria that same month.
In July, Mr. Abaaoud, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia by a Brussels court on terrorism charges and for recruiting jihadists.
As months passed, French authorities collected more evidence that he represented an imminent threat.
In August, French counterterrorism police interrogated a French national who had been detained upon returning from the Syrian town of Raqqa. At least one activist in Raqqa, Islamic State’s capital in Syria and base of operations, said he has seen Mr. Abaaoud in the city in public several times over the past year.
The Frenchman received instructions from Mr. Abaaoud to attack a concert hall in France, but he was detained on the way and failed. Referring to his commander and Raqqa, he warned French counterterrorism investigators: “It’s a real factory. They are determined to hit.”
—Mohammad Nour Alakraa, Dana Ballout, Raja Abdulrahim, Benoît Faucon, Natalia Drozdiak and Matthew Dalton contributed to this article.
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