New Data on Police Foreknowledge of Terrorists Raise Questions on Paris Attack

New Data on Police Foreknowledge of Terrorists Raise Questions on Paris Attack

By Kumaran Ira

November 27, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS" - Since the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, new revelations have provided more evidence that Islamist elements who launched the attack were well known to the intelligence services before the attack that killed 130 people.

These details are of the greatest political significance. They contradict official claims that the attackers evaded the attention of French and European intelligence, and that the only way to prevent new attacks is to accept a permanent state of emergency and police-state measures. If the terrorists were able to plan and execute such a massive, coordinated attack, it was because intelligence agencies did not use the powers they already have to prevent attacks that were carried out by Islamist terrorist forces with which they have close political ties.

On November 25, the New York Times reported that Belgian authorities had a list of suspected Islamists that included the Belgian residents who were involved in the Paris attacks. It wrote, “a month before the Paris terrorist attacks, Mayor Françoise Schepmans of Molenbeek, a Brussels district long notorious as a haven for jihadists, received a list with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area.”

Citing sources inside Belgium’s security services, the Times wrote, “the list included two brothers who would take part in the bloodshed in France on Nov. 13, as well as the man suspected of being the architect of the terrorist plot, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Molenbeek resident who had left for Syria to fight for the Islamic State in early 2014.”

Schepmans said, “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists.” She noted that this is “the responsibility of the federal police.”

Abaaoud, who died in the massive police raid in Saint-Denis last week and was believed to have orchestrated the attacks, lived in Molenbeek. Known to police since 2002, he received multiple prison sentences between 2006 and 2012. He came to the attention of the intelligence services in February 2014, when he appeared in an Islamist video driving a truck dragging the corpses of nonbelievers. Six months later, international arrest warrants were issued for him.

The two brothers cited by the Times, Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, also lived in Molenbeek. Brahim blew himself up on the boulevard Voltaire and his brother, Salah Abdeslam, is currently on the run.

Police also had a file on Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, a suicide bomber at Bataclan theater, even before he travelled to Syria in 2013, while Sami Amimour, a gunman at the Bataclan, had been detained in 2012 due to suspected terrorist links.

Already before the Times report, numerous media outlets had revealed that most Islamists involved in the November 13 attack were known to security forces. Since the Paris attacks, a growing number of experts on French Islamism have expressed amazement that such figures were allowed to operate in France and prepare the attacks.

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