EUROPE’S MOST WANTED man Salah Abdeslam remains at large today despite an international manhunt and a wave of overnight raids in Belgium seeking the key suspect in the Paris attacks which killed 130.
The suspected mastermind, wanted Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed along with 26-year-old woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, in a ferocious post-attacks raid by police last Wednesday on their hideout in a northern Paris suburb.
French officials are working to identify a third person, believed to be a male, who also died in the police raid.
Who is Salah Abdeslam?
Among the many questions hanging, few are more puzzling than the fate and role of Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, 26.
One of the alleged attackers, Salah Abdeslam, was spirited away from Paris to Belgium after the November 13 massacre by two other men who were later arrested and charged there.
Like his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in a bar the night of the attacks, Salah played a key logistical role in the wave of terror that left 130 people dead.
He rented the Polo used in the Bataclan massacre and a Clio and also reserved hotel rooms used before the attacks.
His brother Brahim, like five other assailants, detonated an explosives vest the night of the attacks.
A seventh jihadist was shot by police as they stormed the Bataclan music venue.
Salah however remains at large.
Investigators believe he may have dropped off the three bombers at the Stade de France stadium where President Francois Hollande was watching a football match between France and Germany.
They also think he may have been planning to carry out another attack in the 18th district of northern Paris, where the Clio was found.
The Obs news website reports that the two men held in Belgium told investigators that they found him in a state of shock and wearing an explosives vest when they came to spirit him out.
His brother Mohamed Abdeslam yesterday told RTBF television he thought Salah decided at the very last moment not to go through with his attack.
Salah and his brother Brahim have been described as “big drinkers and big smokers” by friends who knew them from a bar they ran in Brussels that was shut down by authorities a few weeks ago.
The brothers grew up in the Brussels area of Molenbeek, a hotbed of Islamist extremism in Europe.
Both had links to Abaaoud, the alleged ringleader of the attacks, who also lived in Molenbeek.
Where was Abaaoud during the attacks?
The Belgian jihadist who allegedly planned the bloodshed has been seen in CCTV footage at a Metro station in eastern Paris at around 10:15 pm, less than an hour after gunmen began an assault in the city centre, a police source said.
Of Moroccan origin, Abaaoud had spent time alongside Islamic State extremists in Syria and was interviewed by the group’s magazine Dabiq.
His presence in Europe has raised serious questions about the work of intelligence services as he had been under an international arrest warrant issued by Belgium, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in July. It was widely believed he was still in Syria.
Unidentified bodies
So far, four of the gunmen and suicide bombers who carried out the attacks have been named.
Of the three who detonated explosives vests outside the stadium, only one has been identified so far, French-born Bilal Hadfi, 20, who lived in Belgium and had travelled to Syria.
Prosecutors said the other two had entered Europe through Greece on the same day in October, pretending to be refugees fleeing the war in Syria.
A Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad was found next to one of them but it is believed it could have belonged to a dead Syrian soldier.
The other suicide bomber had also presented a Syrian passport in the name of Mohammad al-Mahmod to Greek authorities.
Police have also released a photo in hope of identifying him.
The third assailant at the Bataclan concert hall, where dozens were killed, has also not been identified.
Separately, investigators recovered three bodies following Wednesday’s raid that killed Abaaoud, 28, and Aitboulahcen, a French woman of Moroccan origin.
On Friday police clarified that they had discovered a third body and that Aitboulahcen had not blown herself up, as previously thought.
Investigators are still examining body parts to try to identify the third person who detonated an explosives belt during the police raid.
His DNA does not appear in police files and investigators are trying to determine if he also was among the migrants in Greece.
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