EU MINISTERS WILL hold emergency talks today on tightening border checks after the killing of the ringleader of the Paris attacks in an apartment in the French capital raised troubling questions about the bloc’s security.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan origin suspected of masterminding the attacks that left 129 people dead in the name of the Islamic State group, died in Wednesday’s assault by police on an apartment in northern Paris.
The 28-year-old was thought to have been in Syria — where he had boasted of planning attacks on the West — and his presence in France has raised questions about Europe’s handling of the region’s worst migrant crisis since World World II.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Paris had received no warning from other EU members that Abaaoud was in the bloc, and it was “urgent that Europe wakes up, organises itself and defends itself against the terrorist threat”.
European Union interior and justice ministers are to meet in Brussels where they will discuss tightening checks on all travellers at the external borders of the 26-nation Schengen zone as an emergency measure.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said some of the killers in the Paris attacks had taken advantage of Europe’s migrant crisis to “slip in” unnoticed and warned the cherished Schengen zone would be in danger if the bloc did not improve border controls.
Abaaoud’s links to Syria and the discovery of a Syrian passport near the dead body of one of the gunmen have also stoked concerns elsewhere that jihadists could be posing as refugees from the war-torn country as a cover for plotting attacks.
In the US, the Republican-dominated Congress on Thursday voted to ban Syrian and Iraqi refugees from entering the United States until tougher screening measures are in place.
And in Russia, itself still reeling after a Russian passenger plane was downed in Egypt killing 224 people on board in another attack claimed by IS, both chambers of parliament will hold extraordinary meeting on tackling terrorism on Friday.
Abaaoud was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Belgium, where a court had in July sentenced him in absentia to 20 years in prison for recruiting jihadists for Syria.
But it was only three days after the Paris bloodbath that “intelligence services of a country outside Europe indicated they had knowledge of his presence in Greece”, Cazeneuve said, without specifying which country.
Abaaoud was also checked by police at Cologne-Bonn airport on his way to Istanbul in early 2014, German officials said, but was allowed to go as they had no indication he should be stopped.
He was finally tracked down in Paris after a tip-off from Moroccan intelligence services, according to police sources.
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