Mastermind Abaaoud Killed: Shootout In St. Denis North of Paris [Update]

18 Comments

1. 

   Oui on November 18, 2015 at 2:43 am

   Involved with the Verviers group, Jewish Museum attack and the foiled attack on the Thalys high speed train in France.

   Dabiq VII Features Interview With Runaway Belgian ISIS Fighter Abdelhamid Abaaoud   February 13, 2015

   The seventh issue of ISIS’s English-language magazine Dabiq, released on February 12, 2015, features an interview with Belgian ISIS fighter ‘Abd Al-Hamid Abaaoud, aka Abu Umar al-Baljiki, the leader of the terrorist cell that was the target of the Belgian authority’s January 15, 2015 raid in Verviers. In the interview, he tells how he traveled from Syria to Belgium with the intent of carrying out terrorism there, and how he avoided being caught in the raid and managed to return to Syria despite being wanted by security and intelligence apparatuses. He also discusses his co-conspirators, Belgian ISIS members Khalid Ben Larbi (aka Abu Zubair Al-Baljiki) and Sufian Amghar (aka Abu Khalid Al-Baljiki), who traveled with him to Belgium and were killed in the shootout with the security forces [in Verviers].

   …
   “ABŪ `UMAR: The intelligence knew me from before as I had been previously imprisoned by them. After the raid on the safe house, they figured out that I had been with the brothers and that we had been planning operations together. So they gathered intelligence agents from all over the world – from Europe and America – in order to detain me. They arrested Muslims in Greece, Spain, France, and Belgium in order to apprehend me. Subhānallāh, all those arrested were not even connected to our plans!”

   “DĀBIQ: Tell us about your journey to Shām.”

   “ABŪ `UMAR: Alhamdulillāh, Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave and come to Shām despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies. All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary.”

   Allah blinded my ass … Did Turkey intelligence turn a blind eye?

   Posted earlier in my diary – Europe Officially Declares War On the Islamic State.

2. 

   Oui on November 18, 2015 at 2:45 am

   Coming out of the woodwork:

   ○ Ayaan Hirsi Ali:  take lessons from Israel

   Build a Fort Europe with an Iron Curtain to the East and a cordon sanitair on the Mediterranean.  Furthermore lots of Islamophobe suggestions and ideas I won’t make the effort to translate.

   • 

     Oui on November 18, 2015 at 2:46 am

     A book review of Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali here.

     Summarized: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s anti-Islam diatribe is a piece of propagandistic crap.”

3. 

   Oui on November 18, 2015 at 6:37 pm

   ○ Arrested Leader of Moroccan Militant Group Revealed to Be Belgian Informant with Possible CIA Links (Feb. 2008)
   ○ ‘Superterrorist’ Belliraj gets life sentence in Morocco

4. 

   Oui on November 18, 2015 at 6:54 pm

   “Just Terror”

   France – On Friday, the 1st of Safar, 8 soldiers of the Khilāfah carried out an operation in the heart of French crusader territory. The operation involved multiple simultaneous attacks with explosive belts and assault rifles on various targets including the Stade de France stadium, where the crusader president Francois Hollande was attending a soccer match, and the Bataclan theatre for exhibitions, where hundreds of French mushrikīn had gathered for a music concert. The attacks, which included other targets around Paris and succeeded in killing hundreds of crusaders and wounding even more, shook the world and reminded the nations of kufr that the Islamic State will continue to stand firm in the face of their transgressions and retaliate with fire and bloodshed in revenge for the honor of the Prophet g and the multitudes killed and injured in crusader airstrikes in the lands of the Muslims.  

   Published photo of downed Russian Airbus in Sinaï [pdf]

   On “30 September 2015,” after years of supporting the Nusayrī tāghūt in the war against the Muslims of Shām, Russia decided to participate directly with its own air force in the war. It was a rash decision of arrogance from Russia, as if it held that its wars against the Muslims of al-Qawqāz were not enough offence. And so after having discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport and resolving to bring down a plane belonging to a nation in the American-led Western coalition against the Islamic State, the target was changed to a Russian plane. A bomb was smuggled onto the airplane, leading to the deaths of 219 Russians and 5 other crusaders only a month after Russia’s thoughtless decision.

   Wilāyat Saynā’ – On Saturday, the 17th of Muharram, the soldiers of the Khilāfah succeeded in downing a Russian airliner
   above Wilāyat Saynā’ with more than 220 Russian crusaders onboard, all of whom were killed, walhamdulillāh. This was to show the Russians and whoever allies with them that they will have no safety in the lands and airspace of the Muslims, that their daily killing of dozens in Shām through their airstrikes will only bring them calamities, and that just as they kill, they will be killed, by Allah’s permission.

5. 

   Marie3 on November 19, 2015 at 1:20 pm

   He wasn’t a “mastermind.”  The plan wasn’t likely his entire invention and it was conceptually low-level thinking that any normal fifteen year old is capable of.

   I’m more interested in a forensic analysis of the crime than highlighting the death of one of the participants.  The actual movements (travel) of the perps currently identified and who they associated with and where they got the weapons, ammo, and explosives.  Seems to me they were a bit short on the ammo and explosives, and possibly weapons, for the intended plan.

   • 

     Oui on November 19, 2015 at 2:51 pm

     “He wasn’t a ‘mastermind’.” Personal opinion or do you have a source for this.

     It’s not even certain how IS as organization or Raqqa HQ was involved. Abaaoud had a network of family members and friends, was involved in petty crimes until he left for Syria in 2014.

     Abaaoud was involved in 5/6 plots which were uncovered or failed to complete. The Paris attack was in many ways a botched operation with many shortcomings and failures. Not a well organized operation as would be expected from Al Qaeda or ISIS. Thank God!

     Abaaoud was involved in attacks on Jewish museum, Vervier group and the Thalys.
     Furthermore, Abaaoud wasn’t religious and must have been “radicalized” and trained by IS within a period of a year. For now, unlikely.

     • 

       Marie3 on November 19, 2015 at 3:14 pm

       Yes.  “Botched” in the sense that they proceeded with “the plan” even though they were short of the required assets to accomplish it.  That’s what makes the serendipitous arrest in Germany of the man from Montenegro driving a car that was loaded with weapons and explosives so intriguing.  As well as the recorded entry of Salah Abdeslam from Germany to Austria a few days later.

       How did the stadium bombers (armed only with cheesy suicide belts) get to their target location?  So far, the reports are missing a car and if it’s not found abandoned near the stadium, a driver.  

       Where was Abaaoud when the attacks went down?  Who was the “friend” that secured the loan of the St. Denis apartment from the owner four days ago?

   • 

     Quentin on November 21, 2015 at 8:38 am

     ‘Mastermind’ is a simple way of saying that the attack was his idea and that he planned and executed it. All right. But the word has a CIA/Obama ring, you know, now we’ve got the MASTERMIND in our clutches. There is nothing masterful about what he did. No one knows how many people dream of mowing down a whole punch of people for or not for a cause. Even some of the nicest men and ladies at the tea club may have such visions once in a while. Let’s just cut the hype and say he was the main plotter, organizer, instigator, planner, whatever. But mastermind? That’s political and media hype to rev up the emotional leve. No. It is important that all this horror be brought down to realistic proportions because it’s nothing more than a simple act of butchery that did not require much imagination or planning either. They evidently slipped through the mesh by arranging the crime by the most simple means imaginable: how else would anyone carry out such an act? All the obsessing about the capabilities of Islamic State is the most egregious example of this behavior at the moment.

     • 

       Marie3 on November 21, 2015 at 10:03 am

       “Ringleader” doesn’t convey the same very scary tone as “mastermind.”

       Daniel Lin:

       What we know about Paris terrorists
       -Not Syrian
       -Not refugees
       -No encryption

       What the US is focusing on
       -Syrians
       -Refugees
       -Encryption

       • 

         Oui on November 21, 2015 at 1:35 pm

         • Used a passport taken from the body of a Syrian soldier on the battlefield.
         • The woman that was killed in St. Denis attack did NOT explode a suicide vest
         • Belgium in highest alert for an imminent attack, Brussels in lockdown, events cancelled due to lack of police
         • 

           Marie3 on November 21, 2015 at 3:42 pm

           Missed that first item in the news.  Caught the other two items.  Also, Abaaoud capture on Metro security camera near where the Seat with Kalishnakovs was abandoned.  Good evidence that he was one of those that shot up the people in the bars and restaurants.  That’s two.  Was there a third shooter as the initial eyewitness reports claimed?

6. 

   Oui on November 21, 2015 at 4:46 pm

   Third man on the run is friend Salah Abdeslam, most likely crossed border into Belgium. Excellent in depth coverage by The Guardian …

   Abdelhamid Abaaoud: dead Paris terror planner leaves behind countless what-ifs

   Abaaoud disappeared from his Brussels home in late 2013 or early 2014, long after becoming estranged from his middle-class Belgian-Moroccan family. He had been sent to a well-regarded Catholic school in 1999, when he was 12, but dropped out after a year to live on the streets of the district of Molenbeek, where he was drawn to increasingly violent crime.

   It is there that he met another Molenbeek youth, Salah Abdeslam – one of the Paris attackers, now on the run – with whom he served a jail term in 2011 after a violent robbery. It is not clear whether he was radicalised in jail, or before.

   When Abaaoud decided to leave for Syria, he appears to have gone through Germany. The federal police said on Thursday that they had questioned him at Cologne-Bonn airport on 20 January 2014 before he boarded a flight to Istanbul. His record of petty crime and suspected radicalisation had led the Belgians to put him on a watchlist, but according to Der Spiegel the instructions were for his appearance to be flagged, not for him to be detained.

   A police spokesman said: “There were no indications that would have led us to stop him travelling or arrest him.”

   His arrival in Syria is likely to have been overseen by Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali [aka Tarad Mohammad Al Jarba], Islamic State’s border chief responsible for easing the journey of foreign volunteers through the Turkish border town Gaziantep to the Isis-controlled Syrian border town of Jarabulus. The US Department of State on Thursday offered a reward of $5m for information on Shimali’s location.

   UK Financial Sanctions Notice Al Qaida – Sept. 10, 2015

   Paris attacks: woman killed in St-Denis raid ‘did not blow herself up’

   Brussels in lockdown after terror threat level is raised to maximum

   Brussels has been blanketed with security after the Belgian government raised alert levels on terrorist threats to the maximum, warning of the “serious and imminent” possibility of a Paris-style attack involving firearms and explosives.

   The city’s metro system was closed down on Saturday until Sunday afternoon at the earliest as shops shut, shopping malls were partly shuttered, professional football was cancelled, concerts were called off and music venues, museums, and galleries closed their doors for the weekend.

   See my earlier diary – Turkey’s AKP government shaping a pro-Sunni foreign policy.

   A very troubling policy change for Erdogan’s Turkey… granting freedom of movement to Salafists who had been detained four years ago on charges of terror acts. Has spy chief Fidan continues on a path of joining hands with Saudi Arabia and his earlier meetings with evil Prince Bandar. This alternate move by Turkey ends the close cooperation Erdogan had with the Obama administration, especially with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Turkey will form policy in self-interest making openings to Putin’s Russia and even Israel’s Netanyahu. On Syria and the overthrow of president Assad, my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

   ○ A deeper look at Syria-related jihadist activity in Turkey | CTC |

   • 

     Oui on December 5, 2015 at 5:13 pm

     ISIL militants prepared suicide vests in Gaziantep on Syrian border: Police

     Turkish counter-terrorism units have revealed that militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) prepared suicide bomb vests and other materials in a depot in the southeastern province of Gaziantep for use in the double suicide bomb attack that killed 102 people in Ankara on Oct. 10.

     Police surveillance conducted after the Oct. 10 attack in Ankara, which revealed the cell houses of ISIL militants, prevented further attacks planned by the group such as suicide bomb attacks against a gathering in Gaziantep due to be attended by Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, a HDP rally in Istanbul, and the G-20 Summit in Antalya.

     Police determined that the perpetrators of the Oct. 10 attack – Yunus Emre Alagöz and a second unidentified attacker – were linked to a cell house in Gaziantep.

     …
     Identified by DNA tests, Alagöz is the brother of another ISIL militant, Şeyh Abdurrahman Alagöz, the perpetrator of the Suruç bombing that killed 33 and wounded more than 100 in late July in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa.

     The Alagöz brothers have been revealed to have close links to ISIL, as Şeyh Abdurrahman Alagöz was reported to have been probed last year by the chief public prosecutor’s office in the eastern province of Adıyaman over links to al-Qaeda.

     The town of Adıyaman has become notorious in Turkey as a site of radicalism among young low-income locals.

     Google maps Gaziantep, Turkey

     ○ Gaziantep: Turkish military convoy heads for Syrian border after downing of F-4 Phantom fighter jet
7. 

   Oui on November 22, 2015 at 7:23 am

   As I have stated in my analysis/comments/diary …

   Authorities missed many ‘red flags’ before Paris shootings | Reuters |

   PARIS (Reuters) – There were multiple chances to stop the men who attacked Paris.

   In January, Turkish authorities detained one of the suicide bombers at Turkey’s border and deported him to Belgium. Brahim Abdeslam, Turkish authorities told Belgian police at the time, had been “radicalized” and was suspected of wanting to join Islamic State in Syria, a Turkish security source told Reuters.

   Yet during questioning in Belgium, Abdeslam denied any involvement with militants and was set free. So was his brother Salah – a decision that Belgian authorities say was based on scant evidence that either man had terrorist intentions.

   On Nov. 13, Abdeslam blew himself up at Le Comptoir Voltaire bar in Paris, killing himself and wounding one other. Salah is also a suspect in the attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, and is now on the run.

   In France, an “S” (State Security) file for people suspected of being a threat to national security had been issued on Ismail Omar Ismail Mostefai, who would detonate his explosive vest inside Paris’ Bataclan concert hall. Mostefai, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, was placed on the list in 2010, French police sources say.

   Turkish police also considered him a terror suspect with links to Islamic State. Ankara wrote to Paris about him in December 2014 and in June this year, a senior Turkish government official said. The warning went unheeded. Paris answered last week, after the attacks.

   After Paris attacks, fugitive slipped through police dragnet | AP – Nov 15, 2015 |

   • 

     Marie3 on November 22, 2015 at 10:31 am

     No, there were no more “red flags” evident from the Abdeslam brothers that didn’t also exist for hundreds of others that left and returned from Syria.  Possibly even fewer considering the cafe that they owned and ran.  

     Serendipity and Blink, or a combination of the two, figures most prominently in thwarting terror attacks, and then only if officials or higher level officials can “get it.”

     Diana Dean. Clarence Prevost and Colleen Rowley, Phoenix FBI agent that sent alert about flight schools, and possibly the Montengrin with weapons arrested in Germany (although they seem not to be able to connect him to any Jihadi “cell;” so, the supplies could have been intended for some other criminal operation).

     A system for detection of potential domestic mass killers that produces a substantial number of false positives that are indistinguishable from real positives is beyond the management ability and budgets of LEOs.  The mass detention of young Muslim men after 9/11 was a travesty.

     Not that a more vigilant system of control checks at borders and on transport facilities for a small group of selective individuals, such as Abaaoud, can’t and shouldn’t be implemented.  Particularly after Abaaoud’s boast that he could get in and out of Belgium whenever he wanted to. His boast could also mean that a rat-line exists and if so, hasn’t been detected.    

8. 

   Oui on November 23, 2015 at 1:28 am

   Belgium was the entrance to Europe for US corporations for many decades, starting in the 1960s. Now read what Americans view of that nation, the seat of NATO and the European Unionn formerly the EEC.

   Belgium is a failed state | Politica |

   That the Paris terrorist attacks had strong links to a suburb of Brussels didn’t shock many of us who live in the Belgian capital. Radio stations here in both French and Dutch are full of discussions about Molenbeek that elicit indignation, sorrow, anger, guilt, despair, defiance. But not surprise.

   Friday’s attacks in Paris were but the latest in a litany of jihadist incidents over the last two years involving people with ties to Molenbeek, including the 2014 shooting at the Jewish museum in Brussels, the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January and the failed attack in August on a Thalys train.

   The absence of surprise also makes sense because long before the emergence of jihadism, Molenbeek had acquired a reputation for lawlessness. Most people in Brussels have very little understanding of what such jihadism is and how it comes to link Brussels with Paris, Iraq and Syria, but they were already aware that Molenbeek had high levels of petty crime: muggings, drug dealing and burglaries.

   It would suit some parts of the Belgian political establishment to keep the current agonizing at the level of Molenbeek — to blame, for example, the reign of Philippe Moureaux, the socialist mayor of Molenbeek from 1993-2012, an interior minister and justice minister in federal governments of the early 1980s. Or to fault certain mosques, as Prime Minister Charles Michel recently did.

   But the more painful question that should be asked is: What do Molenbeek’s failures reveal about the deep dysfunction in the Belgian state? That Molenbeek has been allowed to become a breeding-ground for jihadism says some damning things about formal and informal structures in Belgium, and in particular Brussels.

9. 

   Oui on December 15, 2015 at 3:49 am

   The Paris Attacks and the Evolving Islamic State Threat to France  | CTC Sentinel on Dec. 14th, 2015 |

   The French prosecutor provided striking details on Abaaoud’s whereabouts during the attacks in central Paris. He stated that he was caught on videos on the Paris Metro heading to the areas of the shootings where he spent two hours, including near the Bataclan concert hall during the attack, according to data collected about his mobile phone location.[4]

   In a new development, the author can reveal that Abaaoud’s presence near the Bataclan was confirmed by at least one witness formally interviewed by investigators. The witness, who was parked in a car on a dark street about three short blocks away from the Bataclan shooting, testified that Abaaoud was huddling in the doorway of a residential building where he remained for about one hour. The witness described him as very agitated and shouting into the phone with an earpiece. The witness left and came back to the car several times and each time Abaaoud was still there yelling into his phone. After the assault, the witness returned a final time and came across Abaaoud in full light at the end of the street and was struck by his unusual face with a long nose. The witness later remarked that Abaaoud’s head was shaved and that he was wearing layers of unusually large, loose clothing. Having seen his face, the witness immediately recognized Abaaoud days later when pictures of the terrorist emerged in the press. The presence of Abaaoud in the immediate vicinity of the attacks provides an indication of his degree of implication in the supervision and control of the plot and suggests he was giving direct orders and instructions to his team inside the Bataclan during the shootout.[5]

   Abaaoud’s control in real time over the various phases of the plot was further evidenced by the phone data indicating he was communicating with Bilal Hadfi, one of the three Stade de France suicide bombers, in the minutes leading up to and in the very moment when the first of the three blew himself up.[a]  

   Same modus operandi  as the Mumbai attack

   ○ Fire as a Weapon in Terrorist Attacks