The killers who struck at locations across the French capital on Friday night, murdering at least 130 people and injuring hundreds more
Paris public prosecutor, François Molins, said the day after the attacks that the terrorists had divided themselves into three coordinated teams to hit at least six locations across Paris.
Two suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts after attacking concert-goers at the Bataclan theatre, where another terrorist was shot dead by security forces. Three more terrorists blew themselves up outside the Stade de France as an international football match took place inside. The seventh known attacker to die blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe, one of a series of eating establishments in the 10th and 11th arrondissements which were attacked in quick succession by up to three men travelling by car.
On Wednesday 18 November, police and special forces raided an apartment in St-Denis, about 2km from the Stade de France. Intelligence and surveillance had led them to believe that the cell’s alleged ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was hiding there. This was at odds with an assumption reported earlier in the week that Abaaoud was in Syria.
Salah Abdeslam, 26
The former bar manager from Molenbeek is suspected of renting the VW Polo used by the group who attacked the Bataclan, and is the brother of Brahim, the Comptoir Voltaire suicide bomber. In the hours after the attacks, French police stopped Abdeslam and two other men close to the border with Belgium – but allowed them to go on their way because their names were not yet on any wanted list. On Saturday 21 November fears that Abdeslam was hiding in Brussels helped prompt a major security alert in the Belgian capital but a series of police raids failed to yield the fugitive.
Wednesday 18 November: apartment raided
Police launch a huge assault on a flat thought to be the hiding place of Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Some 5,000 rounds are fired during a ferocious seven-hour siege. Abaaoud is killed along with two other people. Eight others are arrested.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27
Abaaoud was tracked to the apartment after surveillance led police to believe his cousin, Hasna Aït Boulahcen, was sheltering him there. Abaaoud was a known extremist who had previously been implicated in several jihadi attacks and plots in France. He appears to have left Belgium in late 2013 or early 2014, passing through Cologne-Bonn airport on his way to Syria, where he rose to head an Isis unit planning attacks in Europe. Through 2014 and 2015 he moved between Europe and Syria – at one point fleeing an Athens safehouse for Raqqa – and had been presumed to be in Syria at the time of the attacks, until intelligence revealed to France three days after showed he had returned once more.
Hasna Aït Boulahcen, 26
Abaaoud’s cousin was heard engaging in an almost hysterical exchange with police shortly before she died in a massive explosion. Police initially said she blew herself up in the apartment, but on Friday 20 November they said the suicide bomber at the apartment was a man. The 26 year-old was described by friends and relatives as an unstable, lost soul who until recently smoked, drank vodka and liked to party.,
Friday 13 November: concert venue attacked at 21.50
89 people died after terrorists fired indiscriminately into the audience. Two attackers blew themselves up and a third was shot dead when security forces stormed the venue around midnight
Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29
Mostefai was the first suicide attacker named by French authorities, identified by prints taken from a severed finger. He was of Algerian heritage and grew up in Courcouronnes, just south of Paris, and married with a five-year-old son. Police had a radicalisation file on him from 2010 but he was never implicated in any terrorist organisation. May have been radicalised in a mosque in nearby town of Lucé. Went to Syria between autumn of 2013 and spring 2014, after which he returned to France. A Turkish official has told the Guardian that Turkey twice tipped off French authorities about Mostefai but only received an information request about him after the Paris attacks.
Samy Amimour, 28
Born in Drancy, a north-eastern suburb of Paris, to Algerian parents and worked for 15 months as a bus driver before being sacked in 2012. Appears to have been radicalised at a mosque in Blanc-Mesnil. Detained in October 2012 on suspicion of “associating with terrorists” and planning to leave for Yemen and held for four days. He went to Syria in September 2013, violating his parole. He rejected his father’s attempts to persuade him to come back but returned to France in mid-October, telling his parents he had married a Frenchwoman and they were expecting a child.
Friday 13 November: three explosions at 21.20, 21.30 and 21.50
One man died as a trio of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the arena. At least one was said to have tried entering the stadium.
Bilal Hadfi, 20
The French son of Moroccan parents who moved many years ago to Belgium. He appears to have been radicalised very rapidly. His extreme views only became apparent at his college in discussions about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015. He left for Syria five weeks later after telling his mother he was going to visit his father’s grave in Morocco. The police raided his house in March, but he managed to return to Europe without raising any alarm. It is not clear whether he travelled through Belgium to reach Paris. He was turned away from the Stade de France because he did not have a ticket for the France-Germany game, and detonated his suicide vest in a near-deserted street nearby.
“Ahmad Almohammad” , 25
A name of a 25 year-old from Idlib found on a forged Syrian passport found near one of the bodies of the attackers at the Stade de France. The fingerprints of an attacker matched those taken from a man who passed through Greece in October. Reports from Serbia say that another man has been detained there with an identical passport, suggesting that several may be in circulation, and throwing doubt on whether one of the attackers had indeed used the Balkan refugee route.
On Sunday 22 November French police tweeted a picture of an unnamed man they said was the third suicide bomber to die outside the Stade de France.
Friday 13 November: first restaurant attacked at 21.25
Shooting began at Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge where 15 people died. At 21.32 five people were shot dead at the Casa Nostra pizzeria, while 19 more lost their lives at La Belle Équipe brasserie at 21.38. A suicide bomber blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe.Brahim Abdeslam, 31
Died at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe after detonating his suicide vest, according to French prosecutors, and was a French national living in the Brussels district of Molenbeek. He ran a bar in the neighbourhood closed by the authorities a fortnight before the attack on the grounds it had been used for drug dealing. He was the brother of the fugitive, Salah Abdeslam.(The Guardian)
Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/nov/16/men-who-attacked-paris-profile-terror-cell
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