Abaaoud, the mastermind of Paris attacks dies in police raid

PARIS (Reuters) - The suspected mastermind of the attacks that killed 129 in Paris was among those killed in a police raid in a suburb of the French capital, the Paris prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday.
    Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant, who had boasted of mounting attacks in Europe for the Islamic State, was accused of orchestrating Friday's coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital, which killed 129 people.
    Police originally thought he was in Syria, but their investigations led them to a house in the Paris suburb of St. Denis aaand heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions.

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Crispian Balmer; Editing by John Irish)

Who is Abdelhamid Abaaoud?
8 key facts about Paris terror mastermind
A 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin was targeted in police raids this morning – suspected of being the mastermind behind last week’s Paris attacks.
    Abdelhamid Abaaoud, described as a former school bully and thief, has previously been linked to Islamic extremist plots – and recently taunted Western authorities from an Islamic State base in Syria.
    He comes from from Molenbeek, a grimy Brussels district dubbed an extremist ‘hotbed’ – where he is said to have known other alleged Paris attackers.
    Abaaoud is suspected of involvement in several botched terrorist plots including an attack on a high-speed train which was foiled when the gunman was tackled by passengers.
    Abaaoud escaped from Europe after Belgian police shot dead two of his fellow militants as they broke up a cell planning terror attacks on security personnel earlier this year.

(1) Abaaoud hailed the dead militants as martyrs.
    He boasted in the ‘official’ Islamic State magazine Dabiq of how he evaded arrest at a European police checkpoint, saying, ‘The kuffar (unbelievers) were blinded by Allah. I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!’


2) He was pictured in an Isis video dragging corpses behind a car
    Last year, Abdelhamid Abaaoud was already known to security forces after appearing, laughing, in an Islamic State video at the wheel of a car dragging mutilated bodies behind it.
3) He knew other alleged Paris attackers before the atrocities
Abaaoud apparently knows Salah Abdeslam, who also has roots in Molenbeek and who is wanted for allegedly taking part in the Paris attacks, and has appeared in Belgian police files linked to Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, who police say blew himself up outside a bar in Paris.

4) He has already been sentenced to 20 years in prison
    Abaaoud was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison in July for running a network to recruit jihadists to Syria.

5) He joined Islamic State in Syria in February
    After the break-up of that terror cell in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers in January, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, that Abaaoud’s name began to widely circulate.
In February, Abaaoud, who was reported at one time to be in Greece, claimed responsibility for the plot against police officers and said he had joined the Islamic State group in Syria.
    Mocking the ‘bloated image’ of ‘crusader intelligence’, he gloated: ‘My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary.

6) His family have disowned him
    After the cell in Verviers was smashed, the father of Abdelhamid Abaaoud said his son had wrecked their lives.
    In 2014, Abelhamid convinced his younger brother Younes, then 13 years old, to join him in Syria and the boy was dubbed the ‘the world’s youngest jihadist’ by some newspapers.
‘Why in the name of God, would he want to kill innocent Belgians? Our family owes everything to this country,’ Omar Abaaoud, whose family moved to Belgium 40 years ago from Morocco, said in January after the Verviers plot.
    ‘Abdelhamid has brought shame on our family. Our lives have been destroyed… I never want to see him again,’ the father of six from Molenbeek was quoted as saying by Belgian media.

7) He uses the name ‘Abou Omar the Belgian’
    Born in Molenbeek in 1987, he goes by the nom de guerres Abou Omar Soussi, after the name of the family home in southwest region of Morocco, and Abou Omar al-Baljiki, meaning Abou Omar the Belgian

8) He was a school bully – and not particularly religious
    ‘He was a little jerk,’ recalled a former classmate from Brussels who told the Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure that Abaaoud used to harass fellow pupils and teachers and also got into trouble for stealing wallets.