Paris shootings - Many dead in multiple attacks

[Autobot]

Fugitive Paris jihadi went to gay bars where staff thought he was a 'rent boy', took drugs and was hooked on PlayStation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...inking-flirting-men-taking-drugs-emerges.html

 

[elggiuqs]

Solutions to end racism/terrorism for good:

1.The gov must govern their country well by treating their citizens well and enforcer strict reasonable law. Like those who post racism stuff on online, judge them by the degree of the damage and the content itself to see whether to give a heavy punishment or just warning. Never support or do nothing like what the ang moh are doing by coming out the interview movie to kill the leader of north korea, this is where hatred between nations rise.

•If the gov in the first place cannot act right, then don’t expect the citizens to follow. As the gov has the power to force and change the mind-sets/behaviors/speech and everything of their people.

•Religion law should all be abolish as they are often cruel, old fashion and it is unfair to use them onto those who are not part of the religion.

•Never the gov must not interfere with other countries affairs, if the gov can’t even govern their own country well, then what’s make them have the rights and everything to teach/help others?

2.Admin of sites must ban all anti religion/harmful groups and contents.

3.The people must know what is right and wrong. Not everything in the holy books can be right or suitable for today’s world. As some of the contents in the books may be amended by the people for their own malicious intents.
Have this mind-sets of only love can cease hatred. Never ill speak of anyone regardless how bad the person is, unless you are doing it for his/her own good but treat the harsh speech of others onto you as lesson/feedback for improvement.

 

[Autobot]

Nearly 300 searches in Paris since attacks: police chief

AFP
November 23, 2015, 10:31 pm

Paris (AFP) - French security forces have made nearly 300 searches in the Paris region since the jihadist attacks of November 13, police chief Michel Cadot said on Monday.

A total of 298 searches were made, Cadot said.

He added there were 10,200 police and 6,400 soldiers deployed across the region that includes the capital -- prioritising stations, airports, large public spaces, government buildings, cultural sites, media companies and hospitals.

"The threat level remains raised," said Cadot.

"We see a number of messages from Daesh (an alternative name for the Islamic State group) being broadcast on the Internet and which clearly target France."

He said there had been a small number of racist or anti-Islamic attacks, but praised the largely "responsible and Republican" response of the French public.

Under the heightened security alert, schoolchildren will not be allowed to take part in the UN climate conference which starts next week just outside Paris, he added.

 

[Autobot]

The 15-year-old girl who was sitting on top of the bomb that brought down Russian jet over Egypt: Explosives hidden under seat 31A 'went off with the force of a kilo of TNT'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html

 

[Autobot]

French police release new photo, ask for help identifying dead Paris stadium attacker

French police released a photo on Sunday of a man believed to be the third unidentified suicide attacker who died in the bombings of the Stade de France during coordinated attacks that left 130 dead last week. The man police are hoping to identify was among three people who died in the attacks outside the stadium.

 

[Autobot]

French police find abandoned suicide vest, as hunt for failed attacker intensifies

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 24 November, 2015, 8:32am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 24 November, 2015, 11:47am

Reuters and Associated Press

The street corner where an explosive vest was found near Paris on Monday. Photo: EPA

An explosive suicide vest has been found dumped near Paris and the mobile phone of a fugitive believed to have taken part in the attacks on the city on November 13 was detected in two locations in the city, sources close to the investigation said.

A French police official said the vest contained bolts and the same type of explosive used in the attacks. The discovery comes amid the hunt for Salah Abdeslam, who is believed to have been among the attackers but failed to detonate his vest.

An undated file photo provided by the Belgian Federal Police shows 26-year old Salah Abdeslam, who is wanted by police in connection with recent terror attacks in Paris. Photo: AP

The official said the vest — without a detonator — was found Monday by a street cleaner in a pile of rubble in Chatillon-Montrouge, just south of the capital.

The official said laboratory analysis showed that the explosive material was TATP — used in seven other explosive vests in the attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The official wasn’t authorised to speak publicly and couldn’t be identified by name.

In addition, the vest was found in the same zone where Abdeslam’s cellphone was geolocalised. Abdeslam was stopped by police in northern France after the attack but allowed to continue his journey.

The 26-year-old barkeeper Salah Abdeslam, 26, apparently returned to Brussels from Paris hours after the attacks and is still at large.

Abdeslam's mobile phone was detected after the attacks in the 18th district in the north of Paris, near an abandoned car that he had rented, and then later in Chatillon in the south, the source said on Monday.

One theory was that Abdeslam had intended to blow himself up in the 18th district but had abandoned the plan, although it was not clear why.

“Maybe he had a technical problem with his explosive belt,” a police source said.

Fearing an imminent threat of a Paris-style attack, Belgium extended a maximum security alert in Brussels for a week but said the metro system and schools could re-open on Wednesday.

French police officers stand guard in a street after an explosive vest was found discarded among litter south of Paris. Photo: EPA

“We are still confronted with the threat we were facing yesterday,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said. Potential targets remained shopping areas and public transport.

Belgium has been at the heart of investigations into the Paris attacks since French law enforcement bodies said two of the suicide bombers had lived there. Three people have been charged in Belgium with terrorist offences, including two who travelled back with Abdeslam from Brussels.

As authorities tried to establish Abdeslam's movements and whereabouts, a source said he travelled through Italy in August with a companion, but his presence caused no alarm because he was not a wanted man at the time.

His companion was Ahmet Dahmani, a Belgian man of Moroccan origin who was arrested in Turkey last week on suspicion of involvement in the Paris attacks, the investigative source said.

In Belgium, prosecutors said they had charged a fourth person with terrorist offences linked to the Paris attacks.

They released all 15 others detained in police raids on Sunday. Two of five people detained on Monday were also released while the other three had their custody prolonged.

Soldiers patrolled the streets of Brussels, which has been in lockdown since Saturday.

The metro, museums, most cinemas and many shops were shut on Monday in the usually bustling EU capital where many staff have opted to work from home. There was also no school or university for almost 300,000 students.

On the Grand Place, a historic central square that usually draws crowds of tourists, an armoured military vehicle was parked under an illuminated Christmas tree.

NATO, which raised its alert level after the Paris attacks, said its headquarters in the city were open, but some staff had been asked to work from home. EU institutions were also open with soldiers patrolling outside.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon told RTL radio, however, that the capital was still operating. “Apart from the closed metro and schools, life goes on in Brussels,” he said.

City buses were running normally and many shops in the suburbs were open.

Workers were also setting up stalls for the city centre Christmas market, which is due to open on Friday, and organisers of the Davis Cup tennis final between Belgium and Britain in the city of Ghent, 55 km from the capital, said it would go ahead this weekend.

French jets from the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier struck Islamic State targets in Iraq on Monday while Britain offered France the use of an air base in Cyprus to hit the militants behind the Paris attacks.

French President Francois Hollande met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Paris as part of efforts to rally support for the fight against Islamic State, which claimed the November 13 attacks. Hollande is also due to visit Washington and Moscow this week.

Cameron offered air-to-air refuelling services and said he was convinced Britain should carry out air strikes alongside France and would be recommending that Britain's parliament vote through such measures.

 

[Autobot]

Paris ringleader planned suicide attack in business district: prosecutor

AFP
November 25, 2015, 5:51 am

Paris (AFP) - The suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks and an accomplice planned to blow themselves up in a suicide attack on the city's La Defense business district, the chief prosecutor said Tuesday.

Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud aimed to target the area in the west of the French capital, where many major French companies have their headquarters, in the week after the November 13 carnage, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.

Abaaoud was killed in a massive police raid on an apartment in northern Paris five days after the series of suicide bombings and shootings in the capital which killed 130 people.

The prosecutor also revealed that telephone analysis showed that Abaaoud returned to the scene of the attacks while the siege at the Bataclan concert venue was still under way.

The analysis showed he had gone back to the area around the Bataclan in eastern Paris -- where 90 people were killed by three assailants -- while the police operation to free hostages was ongoing.

The analysis "leads us to believe that Abaaoud returned to the scene of the crimes after the attack carried out on the people sitting at tables at restaurants and while the BRI (elite police) were intervening at the Bataclan", the prosecutor said.

Abaaoud had also been in contact by phone with Bilal Hadfi, one of the suicide bombers who detonated his explosives outside the Stade de France stadium, the prosecutor said.

 

[Autobot]

Belgium battles 'failed state' tag after Paris attacks

AFP
November 26, 2015, 7:31 am

Brussels (AFP) - Belgium is battling accusations that it has become a "failed state" whose linguistic and communal divisions contributed to failures that let it become a jihadist base for the Paris attacks.

Years of increasing federalism have deepened rifts between the wealthy country's French-, Flemish- and German-speaking regions, leaving it with little sense of nationhood and a dysfunctional, multi-layered bureaucracy.

A brief moment of unity in the face of its own terror alert in Brussels merely papered over the underlying problems that made Belgium unable to dismantle a leading European jihadist hotspot that produced two of the Paris attackers.

Internationally there has been harsh criticism since French President Francois Hollande said that the Paris attacks which killed 130 people were "planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium."

French newspaper Le Monde warned in an editorial this week that "this state without a nation risks becoming a nation without a state".

Politico Europe commentator Tim King went even further, saying "Belgium is a failed state" while Italy's La Repubblica newspaper dubbed it "Belgistan".

"The problem is that in Belgium you have a federal police force, but generally the police are from local forces. So the powers of the interior minister exist but are limited, and that poses political problems," analyst Claude Moniquet told AFP.

- 'Islamo-socialism' -

Belgium is a relatively modern invention, born in 1830 as an independent state to act as a buffer between France and Germany.

It is now an uneasy mix of a Flemish-speaking, more conservative north and a French-speaking, poorer left-leaning south with a small German-speaking population near the border.

But any illusion of political unity on the terrorism issue was shattered on Tuesday, when the main Flemish nationalist party accused the francophone socialist party of "Islamo-socialism" and failing to counter radicalism.

"Twenty years of laxity by the Socialist Party and of Islamo-socialism have brought us where we are today, with Brussels as the rear base for Islamic barbarism," lawmaker Karl Vanlouwe, whose N-VA party is part of the coalition government of Prime Minister Charles Michel, said in a vitriolic article in the newspaper Le Soir.

His criticisms focused on the run-down Brussels district of Molenbeek, which was home to at least three of the Paris attack suspects and been branded a haven for jihadists by the government.

The former socialist mayor of Molenbeek from 1992 to 2012, Philippe Moureaux, has been accused of turning a blind eye to the march of radicalism in the area.

Hassan Bousetta, a specialist on the politics of integration from Belgium's Liege University, said that the problem was a wider one involving a "profile of disaffected young men of Moroccan or Algerian origin" in an area of high unemployment that the Belgian state had failed to tackle.

"The absence of strong links within a community generates jihadism," he told AFP.

The fragmented state is ill-equipped to deal with many problems.

Belgium after all holds the world record for the longest period that a country has gone without a government -- 541 days after elections in 2010.

- 19 mayors, 6 police chiefs -

Police operations are hampered by the fact that Brussels has 19 mayors and six different district police chiefs for the capital, with whom everything must be coordinated in different languages.

The system leads to moments of surreal bureaucracy, such as the fact that Brussels airport remained on a level three terror alert while the city itself was on the highest level of four, because the airport is officially in the Flemish-speaking region that surrounds the capital.

Le Monde said that Belgium had shown "too much tolerance" and was "prisoner to an institutional debate which one could have found picturesque but is now turning tragic."

Belgium's La Libre newspaper reacted angrily, saying that "French condescension knows no limits", but admitted that criticisms would be easier to accept "if it was a state that was a model of coexistence and integration."

Migration and multiculturalism expert Andrea Rea said many of the domestic criticisms of the Belgian system's dysfunctionality were more about political point-scoring and the rivalry between the Flemish separatists and the French-speaking socialists than reality.

"It is more pertinent to point to a lack of coordination at the European level," said Rea, a professor at the Free University of Brussels. "The jihadists think transnationally, while the police are stuck in their national positions."

 

[Autobot]

French police identify third Bataclan bomber through text message to his mother

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 09 December, 2015, 9:48pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 09 December, 2015, 9:59pm

Associated Press

A picture posted in 2014 on the Facebook page of Foued Mohamed Aggad, who has been identified as the third bomber in the attacks at Paris's Bataclan music hall, according to police sources in France. Photo: AFP

The third gunman who terrorised Paris’ Bataclan concert hall before being killed last month in the attack was identified on Wednesday as a Frenchman who left for Syria in 2013.

The development came after his mother received a text message announcing his death and gave a DNA sample to police.

The news was further confirmation that the deadly Paris attacks were carried out largely, if not entirely, by Europeans trained by the Islamic State group in Syria.
READ MORE: Video emerges of moment gunmen opened fire in concert as Kalashnikovs found in terrorists’ car

All the November 13 attackers identified so far have been from France or Belgium, native French speakers who joined Islamic State extremists. The Bataclan attackers, who carried automatic weapons and wore suicide vests, were responsible for the worst of the carnage. Of the 130 killed in Paris that night, nearly three-quarters died at the concert venue.

Victims walk away from the Bataclan theater in Paris, Friday November 13, 2015. Well over 100 people were killed in a series of shooting and explosions explosions. Photo: AP

Foued Mohamed-Aggad left Strasbourg for Syria in late 2013, a French judicial official said, at a time when about a dozen young men from the eastern French city headed to the war zone. Some returned of their own will — including his brother — telling investigators they were disgusted by what they had seen.

The Frenchman many of the returnees said recruited them for IS, Mourad Fares, is also under arrest. All are charged with terror-related offenses and face trial.

Mohamed-Aggad's mother received a text message in English about 10 days ago announcing her son's death “as a martyr” on November 13 — a typical way that IS notifies families of casualties. Then she gave French police a DNA sample which showed that one of her sons was killed inside the Bataclan, his brother's lawyer said, confirming an account by French officials, who requested anonymity to release details of the investigation.

“Without the mother, there would have been nothing,” said the lawyer, Francoise Cotta.

Cotta said Mohamed-Aggad had told his family months ago that he was going to be a suicide bomber in Iraq and had no intention of returning to France. Cotta said Mohamed-Aggad was flagged as a radical but there was no warrant for his arrest.

“What kind of human being could do what he did?” his father, Said, told The Parisien newspaper. “If I had known he would do something like this, I would have killed him.”

The other two Bataclan attackers, Omar Ismail Mostefai and Samy Amimour, were also French. Two of the three gunmen detonated their explosives when police special forces moved in, while the third was shot by an officer and his explosives went off.

There is still identification work for the police to do. One of the Paris attackers, who was killed November 18 in a police raid on a hideout nearby, remains unidentified. Two of the suicide bombers at the French national stadium carried Syrian passports that are believed to be fake.

“What is important is that the investigation is progressing, that the accomplices are found out, that arrests happen,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday.

“This will all take time and in the face of the terrorist threat that is unfortunately here, we need to carry on with this work of tracking down terrorists because we are at war with radical Islam, with Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Attackers who struck Paris that night included three suicide bombers at the stadium, a squad who shot up bars and restaurants, a suicide bomber at a restaurant and the three gunmen at the Bataclan.

 

[Autobot]

Paris attacks suspect got past three police checks: source

AFP
December 21, 2015, 4:59 am

Brussels (AFP) - Wanted fugitive Salah Abdeslam, suspected of involvement in last month's Paris attacks, got past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the Belgian investigation said Sunday.

Confirming a report in the French daily Le Parisien, the source quoted Hamza Attou, suspected along with Mohammed Amri of driving Abdeslam to Brussels the day after the coordinated November 13 attacks in which 130 people died.

At the first checkpoint Attou and Amri admitted to police that they had just smoked marijuana, but were let go, the source said.

All three are from the gritty Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.

Abdeslam sent a text message asking Attou and Amri to come for him, and they found him "agitated... uneasy... unwell," the source said.

Then came a threat: "He told us to take him back to Brussels or he would blow up the car," Attou said, according to the source.

To underscore the threat, Abdeslam bragged about killing people with a Kalashnikov, adding that his brother Brahim had blown himself up.

Seven attackers blew themselves up or were killed by police in the course of the evening on November 13. Five of them have been identified.

To avoid police checks, Abdeslam asked Attou and Amri to take minor roads, but they got lost and wound up on a motorway, Attou said.

At the first checkpoint they were asked if they had "consumed" any substances.

Abdeslam was in the back seat and said nothing, while Amri and Attou replied "yes" because they had just smoked marijuana.

"The policeman said that was not good, but it was not the priority today," Attou said, according to the source.

They were not asked for their papers, but they were at the second and third police checkpoints.

At the third stop, near Cambrai in the far north of France, Abdeslam even gave his address in Molenbeek.

They stopped for petrol and Abdeslam went to the toilet, walking back with his jacket open, revealing that he was not carrying the explosives which Attou and Amri had been led to believe he had on him, the source told AFP.

Abdeslam had told them he left his brother's ID card in a car -- he did not say which car -- "so that he would be known the world over like Coulibaly".

He was referring to Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman in Paris on January 8 as part of the series of attacks that began with the massacre at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

'It's on, we've started' -

The following day Coulibaly took hostages at a kosher supermarket, killing four before being gunned down in a police operation.

The three days of horror in January left 17 people dead.

The investigation into the November gun and suicide attacks, claimed by the Islamist State group, is being conducted in both France and Belgium, the home country of several of the attackers.

A French source close to the investigation confirmed Le Parisien's report that one of the attackers at the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people were massacred sent a text message to a Belgian number saying "It's on, we've started".

Two men are in detention in France on suspicion of providing lodging to the presumed mastermind of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

Abaaoud was killed in a police raid a few days after the attacks.

In Belgium, eight men have been jailed including four accused of helping Abdeslam get away in the hours after the attacks.

Suspected accomplices have also been arrested in Austria.

Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national, remains at large.

 

[Autobot]

Paris attacker Samy Amimour buried

AFP
December 27, 2015, 11:40 pm

Paris (AFP) - Samy Amimour, one of the men that massacred 90 people at the Bataclan music venue in Paris, was buried north of the city, local officials said Sunday.

The 28-year-old was buried on Thursday in Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, where he grew up and his parents still live.

"There were very, very few people there," said a source in the local town hall.

Amimour was previously a bus driver before spending around two years in Syria, according to family members who spoke to AFP in October, prior to the brutal attacks in Paris.

He was one of three attackers killed when police stormed the Bataclan music venue on November 13.

Three other jihadists blew themselves up outside the Stade de France stadium, and another exploded his suicide vest outside a bar not far from the Bataclan.

French law gives individuals the right to a burial either in their area of residence, the area they died, or where their family has a collective plot.

 

[Autobot]

Mother of Paris attacker says she missed warning signs: report

AFP
December 28, 2015, 5:34 am

Brussels (AFP) - The mother of one of the Paris attackers has told a local Belgian television station that she had missed the warning signs, and not spotted that her son had been radicalised.

Fatima Hadfi, who said she was the mother of Bilal Hadfi who blew himself up outside the Stade de France in Paris, phoned into Maghreb TV late Saturday, surprising the presenter.

In the recording of the call on the station's website, she complained that the French authorities were still holding her son's body and she could not understand why it had not been released for burial.

The presenter asked her to explain how Bilal Hadfi, 20, had become involved with the jihadist attackers, several of whom came from Brussels, and why she had not seen any warning signs before he left for Syria in February.

"You could not see anything (different) with him. He was like everybody else," Fatima Hadfi said, speaking mostly in French.

"He was a good boy, friendly and helpful but despite all that, they knew how to get around him."

Asked what role her son had played in the attacks, she said: "I have no idea at all."

Press reports Saturday said the Belgian authorities were questioning staff at Bilal Hadfi's college in Brussels after warnings that he was becoming radicalised were missed.

The college reportedly informed the education authorities of their concerns in April after he went to Syria but the warning was not passed on to police and only came to light after the November 13 attacks.

Fatima Hadfi told Maghreb TV that she was sure that people listening to her would wonder how she could not have noticed any changes in her son's behaviour.

"I have said that to myself. I should have listened more closely, I should have been closer to my children," she said.

Maghreb TV Belgique serves mainly the local Moroccan community in Belgium.

The Belgian authorities are still looking for suspects linked to the attacks on a Paris concert hall, restaurants, bars and the national stadium which left 130 people dead.

On Thursday, they announced they had charged a ninth person.

AFP could not independently verify the identity of the woman who called into the station as Fatima Hadfi.

 

[Autobot]

Paris attackers linked in Morocco arrest

1 hour ago
Africa

The attacks in Paris on 13 November killed 130 people

Morocco says it has arrested a Belgian of Moroccan descent with direct links to the Islamist gunmen and bombers who carried out the Paris attacks.

The man was detained near Casablanca on Friday, the interior ministry said, and had travelled from Syria via Turkey, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

He had fought in Syria with al-Nusra front before joining so-called Islamic State, Morocco said.

The Paris attacks of 13 November killed 130 people.

They are believed to have been at least partly planned in Brussels, and Belgian police have arrested several people as part of their investigation.

The Moroccan interior ministry's statement did not name the suspect, but gave his initials in Arabic, which could be translated as either GA or JA.

The statement said the man, arrested in Mohammediya, had travelled to Syria "with one of the suicide bombers of Saint-Denis".

Three people died during a police raid on an apartment in Saint-Denis five days after the attacks

French police raided a flat in the Saint-Denis district of Paris five days after the attacks, searching for the suspected ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national. He and his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen died in a fierce gun battle during the raid.

A third person who died during the raid, detonating a suicide bomb, was named by the Paris prosecutor's office last week as Chakib Akrouh, a Belgian-Moroccan national, born in Belgium in 1990. He was identified using DNA from his mother.

Both Akrouh and Abaaoud had spent time in Syria.

The Moroccan statement said the arrested man had "built solid ties with IS leaders, including the ringleader of the Paris attacks".

He would stand trial once investigations finish, it added.

Paris prosecutors would not comment on the arrest.

The focus of the international manhunt remains Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks and is still on the run.

 

[Autobot]

Belgium charges 11th person over Paris attacks

AFP
January 23, 2016, 2:23 am

Brussels (AFP) - A Belgian judge on Friday charged an 11th person with terrorism-related offences over the deadly Paris attacks, two days after the suspect was arrested in a raid in Brussels.

The man identified as Zakaria J "has been charged with terrorist murders and participation in the activities of a terrorist group", the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The Belgian national, who was arrested in the troubled immigrant neighbourhood of Molenbeek on Wednesday, is being kept in police custody, it added.

Zakaria, who was born in 1986, was arrested Wednesday, a day before police carrying out another raid in Molenbeek detained Mustafa E., a Moroccan national who was born in 1981.

Mustafa E. was released on Thursday, the statement said.

No weapons or explosives were found in the raids in Molenbeek, an area dubbed a hotbed of jihadists which has seen a string of raids since the November 13 Paris attacks.

French President Francois Hollande has said that the Paris attacks were planned in Syria but prepared and organised in Belgium. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Last week Belgium said it had identified three safe houses used by key suspects including presumed ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Molenbeek resident who was killed in a French police raid days after the Paris attacks.

The premises include a flat in Charleroi, a town south of the capital Brussels where a major airport is located, a house in the rural village of Auvelais near the French border, and a flat in Brussels.

Four suspects remain at large, including Salah Abdeslam who allegedly drove suicide bombers to the French national stadium outside Paris, as well as Mohamed Abrini, suspected of having helped scout out the attack sites. Both are from Molenbeek.