Mastermind hatched plot during months travelling through Europe
PARIS — At the height of Europe’s vacation season, a young man with French and Belgian IDs caught a ferry from southern Italy to Greece. He and a companion returned to Italy four days later, then hit the road for France. The beginning of August marked the first known steps in a mission that laid the groundwork for the Paris attacks.
Over the next three months, authorities believe Salah Abdeslam drove thousands of kilometres across Europe’s open borders to buy gear, rent cars, book rooms, scout locations and move people into place for the Nov. 13 carnage that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds.
Abdeslam’s itinerary, pieced together by The Associated Press, shows the crucial role he played and how extensively the attackers planned the assault, which brought together three teams of suicide bombers and gunmen bound by common language, blood ties, childhood friendships, delinquency and alienation.
Of the 10 dead attackers and accomplices, three remain unidentified. Two more attackers, including Abdeslam, are still on the run.
In September Abdeslam took a rental car twice to Budapest. At the train station in Budapest, he picked up two men, who were among the thousands of migrants travelling through the Balkans. On Sept. 9, he was stopped at a checkpoint on the Austrian border in a rental car, accompanied by two people with Belgian ID cards that later turned out to be fake. He was waved on through.
A month later, in Greece two more men with Syrian passports joined the migrants.
As the two future suicide attackers travelled north, Abdeslam journeyed from his base in Brussels to the Paris suburbs to buy detonators from a store that specializes in fireworks.
Abdeslam rented the suburban Paris rooms that would be the departure points for the attack teams. Two would drive in from Bobigny in the north, and one from Alfortville in the south.
Abdeslam sometimes had help from his older brother, Brahim.
On Nov. 11, Salah Abdeslam and a small-time criminal, Mohamed Abrini, pulled into a gas station north of Paris in their rented Renault Clio, perhaps for a final reconnaissance mission.
At around 3 a.m. on Nov. 12, the two men were again in the car together. That’s the last time Abrini was spotted. He and Salah are the lone fugitives linked to the attacks.
All the attackers and accomplices so far identified were raised in Europe, native French speakers with roots in the immigrant communities of France and Belgium. Minor players — like the man who rented a room to the attacks’ organizer, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, had criminal backgrounds.
The Abdeslam brothers were close to Abaaoud, another Molenbeek resident who had convictions for low-level crime.
Abaaoud’s younger cousin, Hasna Ait Boulhacen, 26, was the target of a drug-trafficking investigation in France.
The Bataclan team had two Frenchmen who left for Syria in 2013, Ismael Omar Mostefai and Samy Amimour and a third unidentified attacker.
The squad of suicide bombers at the Stade de France included the youngest of the attackers, 20-year-old Bilal Hadfi, and the two others. The team of three men that attacked bars and restaurants included Abaaoud, an explosives-rigged Brahim Abdeslam and another unidentified man. Salah Abdesl am may have dropped off the bombers at the stadium.