Was seen by police being led into a building by woman suicide bomber
Was seen by police being led into a building by woman suicide bomber
The top suspect behind last week’s Paris attacks was watched by the police being led into a building by a woman suicide bomber the evening before they both died there during a raid by special forces, a police source said on Friday.
Police had been tapping the phone of Hasna Aitboulahcen as part of a drugs investigation and were able to track her down to the Saint-Denis suburb north of the French capital.
They watched the 26-year-old take Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Noember 13 bombings and shootings that killed 130 people, into the building where both died early on Wednesday morning.
She detonated a suicide belt during the seven-hour police assault on the building, where officials said a third unidentified person died with them. Aitboulahcen may be Abaaoud’s cousin.
Once they learned Abaaoud was in France from Moroccan officials, French police focused on Aitboulahcen, a woman with links to him whom they were already trailing.
Earlier, a police source said Abaaoud had been identified on CCTV footage recorded at a suburban metro station at the same time as the killings were in progress in central Paris.
He was seen at the Croix de Chavaux station in Montreuil, not far from where one of the cars used in the attacks was found, one of the police sources said. In response to the attacks, the police carried out raids across France for a fifth night. A bill to extend a state of emergency until February and give the police new powers goes before the Upper House of the French Parliament later on Friday.
So far, the police have searched 793 premises, held 90 people for questioning, put 164 under house arrest and recovered 174 weapons including assault rifles and other guns, the interior ministry said on Friday.
The police searched a mosque in Brest in western France. Its imam, Rachid Abou Houdeyfa, who has strongly condemned the Paris attacks, achieved notoriety earlier this year after telling children they could be turned into pigs for listening to music.
Abaaoud (28) was spotted on the CCTV tape at 10:14 pm local time on Friday last week, after shootings at several cafes and suicide bombings near a packed soccer stadium, but while an attack was still under way at the Bataclan concert venue.
Abaaoud was a petty criminal who went to fight in Syria in 2013 and, until the attacks, European governments thought he was still there. He is believed to have recruited young men to fight for ISIS from immigrant families in his native Brussels district of Molenbeek and elsewhere in Belgium and France.
