Paris: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks, has been identified by police as the prime target of a major raid in a northern suburb of the French capital on Wednesday.
While it remains to be seen whether or not Abaaoud was holed up in the apartment under siege by police, more details have emerged about the man thought to have arranged the shootings which killed 129 people on Friday night.
According to The Independent, now a prominent member of IS, Abaaoud first travelled to Syria last year— but seemingly not out of any great religious motivation. “He did not even go to the mosque,” his older sister Yasmina told the New York Times earlier this year.
Like many who travel to the so-called “Islamic State”, his actions appear to have been motivated more by a thirst for power, violence and unaccountability. Abaaoud, in his late 20s, was born in Belgium and grew up in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which has become a key focus for investigators in recent days.
He briefly studied at an exclusive Catholic school, before either dropping out or getting expelled and drifting into a life of thievery and drugs. According to his family, the young man showed much more interest in petty crime than Islam, and they were shocked when he took his 13-year-old brother Younes with him to travel to Syria in January 2014, the report added.
After he was trained and further radicalised in Syria, Abaaoud was able to return to Europe via Athens. He was picked up by European security services and reportedly even stopped by police but let go, after which he disappeared.
In February, he gave an interview to the Islamic State English-language magazine Dabiq which suggested he was in Syria. He claimed a policeman who stopped him had failed to recognise him even after his picture had been sold to the media.
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