Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed in the Saint-Denis raid, prosecutors confirm.
Police fired 5,000 munitions as two suspects were killed including the ringleader of the terror attack in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
It appears that Abdelhamid , the alleged planner of the Paris attacks , moved to and fro between Belgium, France and Syria in the months running up to the attacks. It is unclear how he managed this.
Given such concerns, French and EU intelligence has boosted surveillance of telecommunications communication in “migrant transit camps” and along their routes, and they hope to make tighter controls at migrant “hotspots” that are due to be set up at entry points into the EU.
However, many migrants will continue to circumvent these, EU officials admit.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, on Thursday hinted that Abaaoud could have also taken the migrant route to avoid capture, given that he was evading “an international arrest warrant and had been sentenced to 20 years in Belgium”.
He said: “No information from European countries he could have passed through to reach France was communicated to us suggesting that he was in Europe.
Only on 16 November (three days after the attacks), did an intelligence service from a country outside Europe inform us that it had gained knowledge of his presence in Greece (beforehand)”.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister in a press conference thanked all police officers who took part in the raid and praised the composure of Saint Denis residents during the attack.
Abaaoud was behind four of six foiled attacks in France since the spring, he said.
He claimed that Abaaoud planned each in the same way: organising violent action from abroad, perpetrated by jihadists in European countries.
Mr Cazeneuve added that France did not know terror mastermind was in Europe before the attack, and claimed that he received no information from any other country that would suggest Abaaoud was in France.
Visibly irate French interior minister called on Europe to “pull itself together” and push through passenger controls inside the EU to intercept terror suspects. “We must act swiftly and strongly,” he said.
(From Telegraph)
