PARIS JIHADIS ‘GOT IN AS FAKE REFUGEES’
TWO of the suicide bombers who caused carnage in the Paris massacre are thought to have sneaked into France by posing as refugees from Syria.
The disclosure, which came amid claims of French intelligence failures, inevitably raised new security concerns about Europe’s borders.
Police said the two men, who arrived in Greece last month, were among seven attackers, one as young as 15.
All wearing explosive vests, they roamed across the French capital in three teams, perpetrating the ‘worst acts of violence’ in the country since the Second World War. Fingerprint records show that two of the terrorists had arrived in the EU as refugees through Greece.
A Syrian passport found near the body of one of the gunmen who struck at the Stade de France showed the holder, who was born in 1990, had passed through the Greek island of Leros on October 3.
Greece’s deputy minister in charge of police, Nikos Toscas, said he was ‘identified [as a refugee] according to EU
rules’ as he passed through the country, but did not know if it was checked elsewhere en route to Paris. In all, 129 people were killed in a series of co-ordinated bomb and gun attacks on Friday night. With 99 of the 352 wounded critically ill, the death toll is expected to rise.
Six of the terrorists, believed to be from Islamic State, took their own lives, while one was shot dead by police.
Among their victims was a 36-year-old British man, Nick Alexander, from Colchester in Essex, who was selling T-shirts at the Bataclan Theatre where 89 music fans were slaughtered.
With much of Europe on high alert yesterday, a Frenchman caused chaos at Gatwick Airport after producing what appeared to be a gun at an easyJet check-in desk. Hundreds of passengers were evacuated after the 41-yearold man fled and threw the ‘firearm’ into a rubbish bin at the North Terminal following a row with staff.
Armed police rushed to restrain the man and were said to have shouted ‘get down, get down’ to nearby travellers.
Meanwhile in Paris, distraught relatives and friends of people still missing launched a desperate search for loved ones feared killed. They shared pictures and information with the hashtag ‘RechercheParis’ – which means ‘search Paris’ – and it has now spawned its own Twitter accounts and Facebook page. Many of those missing were at the Bataclan concert.
British victim Mr Alexander was with his American friend Helen Wilson when gunman stormed the venue before blowing themselves up. She told how they were forced to lie on the ground – with those who moved, shot.
Mr Alexander was fatally wounded when they tried to make a break for freedom – but someone attracted a gunman’s attention and both of them were shot. Helen was left desperately trying to resuscitate him while the terrorists lurked ‘in the shadows’.
She said: ‘Then he couldn’t breathe any more and I held him in my arms and told him I loved him. He was the love of my life.’
As France declared a state of emergency and tightened its borders, it emerged that a catastrophe was averted at the Stade de France, where 80,000 watched a friendly football match between France and Germany.
A security guard frisked one of the attackers as he tried to enter the stadium with a ticket, only to find that he was wearing an explosives vest.
His plan had been to detonate it on the terraces, triggering a stampede of fans – straight into the path of another bomber outside.
But after being discovered he ran and detonated the bomb outside, killing one other person, a 63-yearold Portuguese man.
At least one of the bombers is a Parisian. French prosecutor Francois Molins said that the attacker, who appears to be the ringleader is from the Courcouronnes suburb, the same district to the south of the capital that spawned the Charlie Hebdo killers
The man, known only as Mr Ismaël, was born November 22, 1985, and had a criminal record, but had never spent time in jail. He had been known to France’s security services since 2010 and was on ‘Fiche S’, their watchlist of known extremists.
He was known as having been radicalised but had never been implicated in a counter-terrorism investigation. ‘He was considered a radicalised person and had a security report,’ Mr. Mollins said.
But he was not being monitored closely enough to stop him taking part in Friday’s monstrous attacks, described by Islamic State, which claimed responsibility, as ‘just the start of a storm’.
Professor Anthony Glees, terror expert at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that some of the people in this plot will have been infiltrated into France in the guise of asylum-seekers. We worried about it, now we have it. I think this is of enormous significance.’
Other vital clues were also missed. More than a week ago, a heavily-armed suspect was stopped in Germany on his way to Paris. Hidden in his car, police found a terrifying arsenal, including seven Kalashnikov assault rifles and seven hand grenades. The destination programmed into his satnav system was Paris but officers failed to alert anti-terror police.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said of the seven attackers: ‘We have to find out where they came from... and how they were financed.’
Mr Molins confirmed that three Frenchmen arrested in Belgium yesterday were linked to the attacks. Police are focusing their investigation on two vehicles. One was a black Seat used by gunmen at two of the attacks and has yet to be found.
The other is a black Volkswagen Polo with Belgian registration plates found at the Bataclan. This was rented to a Frenchman living in Belgium who was identified in a spot check by police on Friday morning as he drove across the Belgian border with two others.
Investigators believe these three may be another team of attackers who managed to flee the scene.
As details of the killers’ identities began to emerge yesterday, Corinne Narassiguin, spokesman for France’s ruling Socialist party, admitted: ‘Obviously there was a failure of intelligence so we’ll have to look into this.’ She told the BBC that the French government had recently voted through new measures to improve surveillance of terror suspects, and 2,000 new posts are being created, but added: ‘Unfortunately all these measures are not yet fully operational.
In May this year, The Mail on Sunday revealed the concerns of security analysts that Islamic State extremists were being smuggled into Europe among refugees crossing the Mediterranean. Yesterday’s discovery appeared to confirm those worst fears.
Prosecutors also said the terrorists used an improved explosive known as TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, which also was used in the 2005 bombings in London.
Expressions of sympathy echoed around the world as France struggled to come to terms with the second major terror outrage on its soil in 12 months.
Prime Minister David Cameron said: ‘The events in Paris are the
One bomber – a Parisian – was on extremist watchlist
worst acts of violence in France since the Second World War, the worst terrorist attack in Europe for a decade, a horrifying and sickening attack. Our hearts go out to the French people and to all those who lost loved ones. Today the British and French peoples stand together as we have so often before in our history when confronted by evil.’
And writing in The Mail on Sunday, London Mayor Boris Johnson promised that the ‘narcissistic death cult’ of Islamic State would be crushed. ‘There can be no compromise with this twisted ideology,’ he writes. ‘No room for common ground because their ambition is so wholly nihilistic. They must be defeated – and they will be defeated.’
Throughout yesterday the streets of the French capital were eerily quiet. The attacks were the worst in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191.
French president Francois Hollande declared the atrocities an ‘act of war’ by IS and vowed to ‘mercilessly’ strike back against the jihadi ‘barbarians’.
The French government stepped up its participation in the military air campaign in Syria at the end of September. On October 8, it conducted a strike against militants in Raqqa, Syria, apparently targeting Salim Benghalem, a Frenchman fighting for IS who was one of the group’s most famous Western executioners. His popularity among French extremists was almost parallel to that of Jihadi John.