Mugabe Says Judges Reckless for Allowing Protests

The sophisticated ISIS network that plots foreign strikes had planned for the carnage in the November 2015 Paris attacks to be far worse, to occur in other European countries as well and, investigators believe, had planned to follow them up with strikes in several locations, CNN has learned.

CNN has obtained thousands of pages of documents and photos from internal European investigations and gathered information from sources close to the Paris investigation that together provide new details about the highly organized terror group intent on attacking overseas targets.

These documents reveal new information about two captured operatives who investigators believe intended to attack France. They also point, chillingly, to the existence of another suspected terrorist -- never before named publicly -- who authorities claim is linked to the Paris terror cell and was on the loose in Europe for months after that attack. That man, identified by authorities as Abid Tabaouni, was only arrested in July.

And the documents shed new light on the highly organized branch of ISIS devoted to plotting attacks inside Europe where, even now, sources told CNN, operatives await instructions from senior handlers in Syria. “ISIS is increasing its international attack planning,” said Paul Cruickshank, a CNN terrorism analyst who contributed to CNN’s investigation and editor of CTC Sentinel, a publication issued by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “It’s increasingly sophisticated in the way it does this. It’s set up an intricate, logistical support system for these terrorists ... to launch these terrorist attacks.”

A CNN team spent months going through 90,000 pages of documents, most of them in French, that included a trove of interrogations, investigative findings and data pulled from cell phones offering insight into the external operations wing of ISIS known as the Amn al-Kharji.

A senior European counterterrorism official who spoke to CNN said that according to investigations into the network that carried out the Paris attacks, they were a slimmed-down version of an even more ambitious plan to hit Europe. After interrogating suspects and gathering intelligence, European investigators now believe that ISIS initially planned for the operatives it sent last year to also attack the Netherlands, as well as other targets in France including shopping areas and possibly a supermarket in Paris, the official said.

In addition, recently obtained intelligence indicates that ISIS has stepped up efforts to infiltrate operatives into the UK to launch attacks there, an official told CNN.

The senior European counterterrorism official told CNN that security services were “uncovering more and more ISIS operatives” on continental European soil. ISIS operatives dispatched back to Europe have taken advantage of encryption, especially the Telegram messenger app, to communicate securely, the official told CNN, frustrating European security services.

“Encrypted messaging groups have the potential to revolutionize terror plot planning by allowing entire cells to coordinate in real time without compromising themselves,” said CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.

Europe’s security agencies have had important successes, though. One major breakthrough was the capture of two men who authorities believe intended to travel to France alongside the two suicide bombers Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has accused court judges of being reckless in allowing antigovernment demonstrations that later turned violent, state media reported on Sunday, a day before a legal challenge to last week’s official ban on protests.

The southern African nation on Thursday outlawed all demonstrations for two weeks in the capital Harare, which has witnessed protests against Mugabe’s handling of the economy, cash shortages and high unemployment.

Some political activists have approached the High Court to challenge the ban which they say is unconstitutional. The hearing is set for today. Mugabe told a conference of the ruling ZANU-PF’s youth wing on Saturday that “enough is enough” and he would not allow violent protests to continue, the Sunday Mail newspaper reported.

Violence erupted more than a week ago when police used teargas and water cannon to disperse who eventually blew themselves up outside a Paris stadium. Those two suspected ISIS operatives are identified in the documents as Algerian-born Adel Haddadi and his Pakistani travel partner, Muhammad Usman.

Documents that detail their capture and extensive interrogations, particularly with Haddadi, show how ISIS supported the attackers throughout their journey from Syria through Europe -- and how future attacks might be organized. The following account of their journey to Europe is based on those documents, which include marchers. “Our courts, our justice system, our judges should be the ones who understand even better than ordinary citizens. They dare not be negligent in their decisions when requests are made by people who want to demonstrate,” the Sunday Mail quoted Mugabe as saying.

“To give permission again when they are to the full knowledge that evidence gathered by investigators, and their conclusions.

Haddadi and Usman, who was identified by investigators as a suspected bombmaker for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, set out from the capital of the self-declared ISIS caliphate in Raqqa, Syria, six weeks before the Paris attacks.

They were part of a team, investigators concluded. The two others, Ahmad al-Mohammad and Mohamad al-Mahmod, would later blow themselves up outside the national stadium in Paris. The team crossed the border from Syria into Turkey in early October and headed for the Turkish coast. it is going to be violent or (there is) probability that there is going to be violence is to pay reckless disregard to the peace of this country. ‘Police routinely cite lack of manpower and a threat to security as a reason for barring opposition protests, but the decisions have often been overturned by the High Court.

Tendai Biti, leader of the People’s

The four men didn’t seem to know each other’s real names, or what their final mission would be. All Haddadi knew, he later told interrogators, was that they were being sent to France to do “something for the good of God.” The documents show that their journey was directed by a shadowy ISIS leader in Syria, known only as Abu Ahmad. Operating like a puppet-master from afar, Abu Ahmad handled their logistics: connecting them with smugglers and cars for transport, providing pre-programmed cell phones and getting them fake Syrian passports. Democratic Party and the lawyer behind the legal challenge to the latest ban, accused Mugabe of intimidating the judiciary and violating the constitution. “What Mugabe is trying to do is breaching the constitution by assaulting the judiciary and by trying to cause direct and indirect fear into judges,” Biti said.