Bombers who slipped through the net
Print Edition
THERE were multiple chances to stop the men who attacked Paris, it has been revealed.
In January, Turkish authorities detained one of the suicide bombers at the 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 said.
Yet during questioning in Belgium, Abdeslam denied any involvement with militants and was set free. So was his brother Salah.
On November 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 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 said.
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.
A fourth attacker missed at least four weekly check-ins with French police in 2013, before authorities issued an arrest warrant. By that time he had left the country.
On any one of these occasions, police, intelligence and security services had an opportunity to detain at least some of the men who launched the attacks.
That they did not helps explain how a group of Islamist militants were able to organize even as they moved freely among countries within the open borders of Europe’s passport-free Schengen area and beyond.
Security services attribute the lapses in communication, inability to keep track of suspected militants and failure to act on intelligence to a lack of resources in some countries and a surge in the number of would-be jihadis.
“We’re in a situation where the services are overrun. They expect something to happen, but don’t know where,” said Nathalie Goulet, who heads the French Senate’s investigation committee into jihadi networks.
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