AN ENDURING THREAT: EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS THEN AND NOW Network and associates: -! Paris attacks (November 2015): Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Salah Abdeslam, Brahim Abdeslam, Chakib Akrouh, Bilal Hadfi, M al-Mahmod, Omar Ismail Mostefai, Ahmed al-Mohamed, Sami 281 Amimour [fellow Paris attackers]. Other: -! Mourad Fares [Arrested in Turkey in 2014, Fares is believed to have recruited Aggad and 282 his fellow travellers to Syria]; Karim Mohammed Aggad [Brother and fellow IS militant arrested 283 along with the remaining jihadists with whom Aggad travelled to Syria]. 1.4 Paris: Accomplices SALAH ABDESLAM Role: 284 Abdeslam played a logistical role in the Paris attacks and claims to have failed to carry out a suicide bombing at the Stade de France. Accused of “terrorist murder” and is believed to have been planning a 285 shooting attack with Soufiane Ayari and Mohamed Belkaid to accompany the Brussels attacks. Bio: A Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent, Abdeslam was born in Brussels on 15 286 September 1989 and grew up in the Molenbeek area of the city. Involved in petty crime including drug trafficking in his teens, he worked as a transport technician for the state-owned Belgian railway firm Société des Transports Intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB) from 2009 to 2011 before being fired. During this 287 time he was also “jailed briefly for burglary” alongside childhood friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud. By 2013, he was running a bar with his brother, Brahim, as well as a grocery store. The bar was later shut down in connection with drug offences in 2015, and Salah Abdeslam was fined for possession of cannabis in the 288 Netherlands in February of that year. By 2015, it also appears that he was becoming more closely involved with extremists, and was placed on 289 a police list for links to IS fighters in Syria along with his brother. In the months leading up to the Paris attacks, he began to travel across Europe to pick up fighters returning from Syria as they gathered for the 290 attacks, including Najim Laachraoui, believed to be the bomb-maker. He travelled between Brussels and Paris several times in September and October, buying detonators, and booked apartments and hotel 291 rooms for the attackers. ! ! 281 ibid. 282 ‘Who was third Bataclan attacker Foued Mohamed-Aggad?’, BBC News, 9 December 2015; and Willsher, K, ‘Paris attacks: police identify third Bataclan assailant’, Guardian, 9 December 2016, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/paris-attacks-third-bataclan-attacker-identified-by-police, last visited: 9 August 2016. 283 ‘Who was third Bataclan attacker Foued Mohamed-Aggad?’, BBC News, 9 December 2015. 284 Payne, E., ‘Salah Abdeslam claims a minor role in Paris terror attacks’, CNN, 26 March 2016, available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/26/europe/paris- terror-attacks-salah-abdeslam/, last visited: 9 August 2016. 285 ‘Suspects linked to the Paris, Brussels attacks’, Reuters, 8 April 2016, available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-blast-people-factbox- idUSKCN0X5208, last visited: 9 August 2016. 286 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016; Farmer, B. et al., ‘Who is Salah Abdeslam and who were the Paris terrorists? Everything we know about the Isil attackers’, The Telegraph, 18 March 2016; and Chrisafis, A., ‘Paris attacks: suspect's fingerprint found in Belgian raid apartment’, Guardian, 18 March 2016, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/paris-attackers-dna-found-in-belgian-raid-apartment last visited: 9 August 2016. 287 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 288 Chrisafis, A., ‘Paris attacks: suspect's fingerprint found in Belgian raid apartment’, Guardian, 18 March 2016. 289 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 290 Whitehead, T. and Colin Freeman, ‘Brussels explosions: The Isil terror cell that spread across Europe’, The Telegraph, 22 March 2016; and ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 291 Brisard, J., ‘THE PARIS ATTACKS AND THE EVOLVING ISLAMIC STATE THREAT TO FRANCE’, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 14 December 2015. ! ! 28 !