Police hunt Paris gunman—but are there others?
This undated file photo released Friday, Nov. 13, 2015, by French Police shows 26-year old Salah Abdeslam, who is wanted by police in connection with recent terror attacks in Paris, as police investigations continue. The notice, released on the national police Twitter account, says anyone seeing Salah Abdeslam, should consider him dangerous and call authorities immediately. The notice reads in French: “Call for witnesses – Police are hunting a suspect : Salah Abdeslam, born on Sept. 15, 1989 Brussels, Belgium. …Dangerous individual don’t intervene yourself.” Police Nationale via AP FILE PHOTO
FRANCE—Police on Tuesday stepped up a Europe-wide hunt for the Paris attackers after video confirmed a ninth man may also have taken part in the worst attacks in French history.
READ: Video confirms ninth assailant in Paris—police sources
Investigators are hunting the suspect for his part in the carnage that left 129 people dead, after footage showed a third man in a car used in one of the attacks on bars and cafes in central Paris.
He could be one of two suspects being held in Belgium or on the run—possibly with 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who carried out the shootings along with his suicide-bomber brother Brahim.
READ: Mastermind of Paris attacks named
Belgian police failed to find Abdeslam during a raid in Brussels on Monday, while a subsequent sighting of him in Germany turned out to be a wild goose chase.
In claiming responsibility for the attacks, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) group said eight men were involved.
As the manhunt continues, investigators are seeking to pinpoint when, where and how France’s worst-ever attacks were organised, and whether more accomplices are running free.
The plan and the timing?
How the gunmen communicated, where they travelled and how they planned Friday’s attacks is key to the probe.
On Tuesday, police found a black Renault Clio rented under Abdeslam’s name in a northern district of the French capital. It had been spotted on the A1 motorway that heads north from Paris.
His bank card was also used to rent two hotel rooms in the northern suburbs days before Friday’s attacks at the national stadium, a concert hall and restaurants and cafes, police sources said.
But it remains unclear how one of the gunmen, French national Samy Amimour, returned to Europe from Syria without being detected given he is wanted under an international warrant.
Or why Belgian police failed to notify their French counterparts that the Abdeslam brothers, who had been living in Brussels, had been flagged as radical Islamists.
Who has been named?
Two of the three suicide bombers whose bodies were found at the Bataclan concert hall, the site of the worst carnage where 89 people were killed, grew up in France.
Amimour, 28, grew up in Drancy, a poor immigrant area northeast of Paris, and worked as a suburban bus driver. He was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism in October 2012, but violated his bail, leaving for Syria almost a year later.
Omar Ismail Mostefai, a 29-year-old with petty criminal convictions who was born in the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes, had also been identified by the authorities as radicalised in 2010 and is believed to have spent time in Syria.
Nine people linked to the pair are in detention, although the third suicide bomber whose body was found at the site has not yet been identified.
One of the three assailants who blew themselves up at the French national stadium, killing one person, was Bilal Hadfi, a 20-year-old Frenchman living in Belgium who spent time in Syria.
Two men were arrested at Molenbeek on Monday on suspicion of having helped Salah Abdeslam after the attacks: Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attou, 20.
Who is still unidentified?
French police on Tuesday released a photograph of one of the bombers from outside the stadium in a bid to establish his identity. Near to his body was a Syrian passport, which investigators believe may have belonged to a Syrian regime soldier killed several months ago.
The man’s fingerprints had been registered in Greece in October and the passport holder was later registered crossing the border between Macedonia and Serbia where he formally applied for asylum.
The third body found at the stadium has not yet been identified. It also remains unclear why the three detonated their suicide vests in near-empty areas while 80,000 spectators were inside watching a France-German friendly football match.
Investigators are also seeking the ninth suspect from the car with the Abdeslam brothers, who gunned down five people in front of the bar A La Bonne Biere, a source close to the inquiry said.
The video shows the assailants firing from the car, which was later found abandoned in Montreuil, east of Paris along with three Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Planned in Syria?
French President Francois Hollande said Friday’s “acts of war… were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organized in Belgium (and) perpetrated on our soil, with French complicity.”
Mostefai, Amimour and Hadji have spent time in jihadist-controlled areas of Syria as is probably the case with the two Abdeslam brothers.
A suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks is Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old of Moroccan origin, linked to Islamic extremist plots and recruitment efforts in Europe over the past two years.
Abaaoud, who likes to brag about his close calls with European police in ISIS magazine Dabiq, was cited along with Salah Abdeslam in criminal cases in Brussels in 2010 and 2011.
Investigators have no proof showing the attacks were carried out on an order from Syria, but a Frenchman detained in August after returning from the war-torn country told investigators he had been ordered to stage an attack, “ideally” at a concert, on an order from Abaaoud.
