Attacker may have had accomplice on Balkans route

One of the Paris suicide attackers may have had an accomplice with him as he travelled through the Balkans to western Europe after entering Greece posing as a Syrian refugee, counter-intelligence and police sources say.

The assailant may also have reached Paris faster and more easily than expected because asylum seekers were rushed across some national borders at the height of the migration crisis in Europe this year to avoid bottlenecks after Hungary closed its borders, ironically to keep out suspected militants.

The man, who blew himself up near the Stade de France stadium in Friday’s attacks that killed 129 people, has been identified from a Syrian passport found near his body as 25-year-old Ahmad al-Mohammad from the northwestern city of Idlib.

The true identity of the attacker has become a key line of inquiry for French investigators, with the focus on whether the passport is genuine, sources close to the investigation say.

Despite media reports that it may be counterfeit, investigators are also looking at the possibility that it is genuine — but could have been stolen or bought from a refugee after he made his way into Europe and subsequently used by the attacker, they say.

The passport’s holder was registered as arriving alongside 198 refugees by boat from Turkey on October 3 in Leros, a small picturesque Greek island.

French authorities have said the fingerprints of the attacker who blew himself up matched those of the man who landed on Leros.

Greek officials said on Sunday that Mohammad seemed not to be travelling with anyone specific, despite arriving with others. But a counter-intelligence source in Macedonia, one of the countries he passed through, spoke of a “massive investigation in the Balkans about the route of two of the terrorists”.

The source, who declined to be named, indicated that Macedonia was coordinating its action with Greece, and that a companion was with Mohammad by the time they bought ferry tickets taking them to Piraeus on the Greek mainland.

A Leros travel agent said that on October 4 he issued two tickets costing 51.50 euros ($54.90) each to the men for a ferry departing the following night from the nearby island of Kalymnos, which is reached from Leros by a local service. The 23:10 sailing reached Piraeus on the morning of October 6.

The owner of the Kastis travel agency in Leros, 42-year-old Dimitris Kastis, remembers selling tickets to Mohammad and a man who was with him. “He didn’t do or say anything that caught my attention,” Mr Kastis said, adding that both men had paid in cash. He said the man travelling with him had a similar surname. Greek media have published a photograph of the second man’s ticket which gives his family name as al-Mahmod, and the initial of his given name as M. Mr Kastis said he recognised this as the name the second man provided when purchasing the ticket.