AN ENDURING THREAT: EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS THEN AND NOW On the day of the attack, he played a major role and drove a team of suicide bombers to the Stade de France. However, he failed to carry out his own attack, disposed of his suicide belt, and called friends to 292 drive him back to Brussels. This fits with the recording claiming IS’s responsibility which features the voice of Fabien Clain, and mentions an attack on the 18th arrondissement. No such attack took place, but Salah Abdeslam’s car was found abandoned in the spot where Clain appears to have expected an attack 293 to take place. Abdeslam appears to have spent the months between the Paris attacks and his arrest on 294 18 March 2016 hiding in and around Brussels, including in a flat in Forest raided by police. Foreign training/combat: Unknown. Movements: A former Slovak Interior Ministry official claimed Abdeslam spent three weeks in Nitra, 295 Slovakia in the summer of 2015. Abdeslam travelled by boat from Italy to the Greek port of Patras in 296 August 2015 alongside Ahmed Dahmani, later arrested in Turkey; He visited Keleti railway station in 297 Budapest in mid-September 2015, leaving with two men who had been travelling as a refugee. He was stopped by police on the border between Hungary and Austria in the same month with Mohamed Belkaid 298 and Najim Laachraoui; He then visited three men in a refugee shelter in Ulm, Germany in October 299 2015, and was stopped by police alongside Soufiane Ayari and Osama Krayem; Paris (November 2015); 300 Brussels. Criminal history: 301 302 Abdeslam was jailed for burglary in 2010. His bar was shut down in 2015 in 303 connection with drug-related activity, and he was involved with drug trafficking in his teens. Fined for possession of cannabis in the Netherlands in February 2015.304 Known to the authorities: 305 Belgian authorities questioned Abdeslam in February 2015 and he was placed 306 on a police list for links to IS fighters in Syria early that year. It has been reported that Belgian authorities 307 dropped an investigation into both Abdeslam brothers six months before the Paris attacks. Networks and associates: -! Brussels attacks (March 2016): Najim Laachraoui [Laachraoui was stopped in September 2015 308 at the Hungary-Austria border in a car driven by Abdeslam; Laachraoui’s DNA was also found ! ! 292 ‘How are the Brussels attackers linked to Paris?’, France 24, 21 April 2016. 293 Robinson, M., ‘Revealed: French voice behind chilling ISIS Paris massacres message is also a homegrown terrorist behind other attacks in his own country’ Daily Mail Online, 18 November 2015, available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323851/French-voice-chilling-ISIS-Paris-massacres-message-homegrown- terrorist-attacks-country.html, last visited: 9 August 2016. 294 ‘How are the Brussels attackers linked to Paris?’, France 24, 21 April 2016. 295 Cunningham, B., ‘Salah Abdeslam spent three weeks in Slovakia’, Politico, April 7 2016, available at: http://www.politico.eu/article/slovak-officials-confirm-terror- suspect-was-in-the-country-last-year-salah-abdeslam-isil-terror-attacks-paris-brussels/, last visited: 9 August 2016. 296 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 297 ‘Paris attacks suspect was at Budapest railway station, Hungarian government claims’, Guardian, 3 December 2016, available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/03/paris-attacks-suspect-salah-abdeslam-budapest-keleti-railway-station, last visited: 9 August 2016. 298 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016; and ‘How are the Brussels attackers linked to Paris?’ France 24, 21 April 2016. 299 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. 300 Chrisafis, A., ‘Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam shot and arrested in Brussels’, Guardian, 18 March 2016, available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/paris-attacks-suspect-salah-abdeslam-wounded-in-brussels-terror-raid-reports, last visited: 9 August 2016. 301 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 302 ibid. 303 Faiola, A. and Souad Mekhennet, ‘The Islamic State creates a new type of jihadist: Part terrorist, part gangster’, The Washington Post, 20 December 2015. 304 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 305 ‘How are the Brussels attackers linked to Paris?’, France 24, 21 April 2016. 306 ‘Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s luck runs out’, BBC News, 19 March 2016. 307 ‘Salah Abdeslam 'seen by Belgian police posing with Isil flag' three weeks before Paris attacks’, The Telegraph, 17 May 2016, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/salah-abdeslam-seen-by-belgian-police-posing-with-isil-flag-thre/, last visited: 9 August 2016. 308 ‘Najim Laachraoui, 24, Bomb Maker for Paris and Brussels Attacks’, International New York Times, 25 March 2016. ! ! 29 !