Europe’s migrant crisis became the perfect cover
AS one of Europe’s most wanted men, Abdelhamid Abaaoud should, in theory, have struggled to move anywhere on the continent without being picked up by the security services sooner or later.
For two years he had been a known Islamic State fanatic, recruiting his own 13-year-old brother and becoming linked to several murderous plots.
But as he planned his return from the terrorist training grounds of Syria to cause carnage on the streets of Paris, the perfect cover presented itself. He, and others involved in the Paris attacks, could exploit the chaos of Europe’s migrant crisis to come and go as they pleased by posing as refugees.
Abaaoud, the organiser of the Paris attacks, was killed during Wednesday’s police raid on a flat in Saint-Denis. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he had travelled through Greece, disappearing among the 300 000-plus refugees and migrants that have made the same journey this year.
At least two of the jihadis who killed 130 people in Paris — and a man now on the run — had also posed as migrants or refugees to make a round trip to Syria.
The Schengen border-free zone of European countries now finds itself in an existential crisis, with migrants and terrorists alike travelling with ease to every corner of Europe. SIEGE: Soldiers and a police officer patrol central Brussels yesterday after Belgium raised the alert status for its capital to the highest level, shutting the metro and warning the public to avoid crowds because of a ‘serious and imminent’ threat of an attack
While the arguments over border controls rage, the intelligence and security services are without one of their key weapons in the war on terror.
Cazeneuve said on Thursday that it was only three days after the Paris attacks that ‘‘intelligence services of a country outside Europe indicated they had knowledge of [Abaaoud’s] presence in Greece”. THE Radisson Hotel in Mali’s capital is exactly the kind of establishment that should make a visitor nervous.
Its clean and functional interior looks like any other international hotel, but if you happen to be interested in killing Westerners, the Radisson is one of a handful of places in Bamako where you can be sure that your targets will always be present.
Aid workers, diplomats and UN officials — not to mention Air France flight crews — all stay there. When I was a guest in 2013, the hotel was considered safe enough for the UN to hold meetings and events in its conference rooms.
German federal police also admitted Abaaoud had been checked going through Cologne Bonn Airport on January 20 last year, on his way to Istanbul, from where he would head for Syria. The French were not told, because he was not on any wanted list in Germany.
Once in Syria, Abaaoud would have been taken to IS’s “reception centre” for new recruits
Unlike similar hotels elsewhere in Bamako, the Radisson is not surrounded by spacious grounds. It overlooks a public street — and the main entrance is only a few metres from the road.
Al-Qaeda and those inspired by its ideology have a history of attacking international hotels across the world, from the Serena in Kabul to the Marriott in Islamabad and the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. These are the places where you can be sure of finding Westerners (and where Westerners tend to feel safe).
The Radisson exists in a country where al-Qaeda and its allies controlled two-thirds of the national territory — until France intervened in 2013. The lightning Operation Serval in Azaz, near the Turkey border, for vetting and training.
He is likely to have come into contact with Tarad Mohammad al-Jarba, IS’s gatekeeper on the Turkish border, who plays a key role in organising terrorist attacks in the West. Jarba would have arranged for Abaaoud to slip back into Turkey via the IScontrolled border town of Jarabulus, and from there to broke al-Qaeda’s grip on northern Mali and liberated more than a million people from its rule.
But it did not end the terrorist threat. Like their counterparts in Iraq, Afghanistan and half a dozen other places, al-Qaeda and its allies in Mali went underground, mastering the black arts of suicide bombing, improvised explosive devices and machine-gunning the innocent.
From their stronghold in northern Mali, they infiltrated Bamako in the south. The assault on the Radisson on Friday was preceded by a series of incidents in the capital, notably in March when hand grenades were thrown inside a bar, killing five people. — © Istanbul or any of the other centres where Syrians congregate before making their journeys to Europe.
But where refugees make perilous journeys in dinghies piloted by human traffickers, his safe passage was secured and paid for by Jarba’s network.
At least three of the bombers are now thought to have travelled the same route. One was using a false Syrian passport, in the name of Ahmad al-Mohammad, which is likely to have been supplied by his IS handlers.
The fake passport was “registered at each stage of its holder’s journey along the Balkans’ migrant route”, starting in Greece, according to Le Monde.
Police also suspect that Samy Amimour, one of the Bataclan killers and subject to an international arrest warrant, returned from Syria to Belgium “in all likelihood via Greece”, according to a source.
Salah Abdeslam — who is under an international arrest warrant — entered Europe from Syria via Greece “with his own passport”.
Europe’s porous borders meant that Abaaoud was able to plan four out of the six terrorist plots foiled by the French this year, Cazeneuve said.
According to Abaaoud’s own account, he planned at least one on Belgian soil, while the authorities thought he was in Syria.
Earlier this year, he boasted in an IS magazine: “My name and picture were all over the UNSAFE HAVEN: Curtains soaked in blood lie on the floor of the Radisson Hotel in Bamako, Mali news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations . . . and leave safely when doing so became necessary.” He travelled with two other jihadis: “We . . . were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned . . . operations against the crusaders.” — © The