The Syria-based Belgian jihadi suspected of planning the bloody attacks that killed 129 people in Paris died a day ago in a hail of police bullets, French officials confirmed on Thursday, raising serious questions about how one of Europe’s most wanted men could travel freely around the continent, reports The Guardian.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Abdelhamid Abaaoud, an Islamic State extremist believed by French intelligence services to have been in Syria, was killed on Wednesday in the ferocious firefight at a crumbling terrorist hideout north of Paris.
Confirmation that a top terrorist suspect had travelled into and through the EU from Syria on at least two occasions in the past 12 months, passing checks in countries including Belgium and Germany without alarms being triggered, has put European leaders under intense pressure to get a grip on Europe’s external and internal borders.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Abaaoud had played a “decisive role” in the Paris attacks and was suspected of involvement in four of the six terror plots that French intelligence services had foiled this year.
But, Cazeneuve pointed out, he was the subject of both a European and an international arrest warrant – and no EU intelligence service had alerted France that he was on European soil.
The interior minister said information – from a non-European agency – that the jihadi may recently have been in Greece only reached France on 16 November, three days after the attacks.
The mutilated body of the 28-year-old, linked with half a dozen terrorist plots across Europe, was found in the rubble of the badly damaged apartment in St-Denis and identified from skin samples.
As the head of Europol, the EU police agency, revealed much higher figures for suspected and potential “foreign fighters” on its watchlists, EU interior ministers, meeting on Friday at France’s request, are set to unveil a battery of mainly electronic measures aimed at combatting terror and improving border controls.
Many have been mooted before, particularly after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in January, but not implemented. “But because of Paris, it’s the best chance to push them through because that will vanish in a few weeks,” a senior EU diplomat admitted.
Europe now had “to move fast and firmly,” Cazeneuve said, calling on his fellow ministers to agree on a Europe-wide passenger information register, improved controls along Europe’s external borders, and better coordination against arms-trafficking.
“France has been calling for these measures for more than 18 months, and some progress has been made,” Cazeneuve said. “But it is not fast enough, and it does not go far enough ... Everyone must understand Europe has to organise, recover, defend itself against the terrorist threat.”