Raid on to hunt Paris attacks mastermind

AFP, BRUSSELS: Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected Paris attacks mastermind targeted in a French police raid on Wednesday, was a schoolyard bully who had recently taunted the West from an Islamic State base in Syria.
Abaaoud, a 28-year-old from Brussels of Moroccan origin, has been linked to a series of Islamic extremist plots and recruitment efforts in Europe over the past two years and had bragged of how he had avoided arrest.
French police said two suspected jihadists were killed, including a woman who blew herself up, and five people were arrested during a shootout with police in north Paris Wednesday in an operation aimed at Abaaoud.
Abbaoud has in the past boasted of a close call he had when he passed through a European checkpoint as police studied a photo of him. “The kuffar (unbelievers) were blinded by Allah. I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!,” Abaaoud told the Islamic State magazine Dabiq.
“This was nothing but a gift from Allah,” said a bearded Abaaoud who appears in an accompanying photo holding up a Koran in one hand and a black Islamic State flag in the other in front of a US-made Humvee.

Raid on to hunt Paris attacks mastermind

AFP, BRUSSELS: Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected Paris attacks mastermind targeted in a French police raid on Wednesday, was a schoolyard bully who had recently taunted the West from an Islamic State base in Syria. Abaaoud, a 28-year-old from Brussels of Moroccan origin, has been linked to a series of Islamic extremist plots and recruitment efforts in Europe over the past two years and had bragged of how he had avoided arrest. French police said two suspected jihadists were killed, including a woman who blew herself up, and five people were arrested during a shootout with police in north Paris Wednesday in an operation aimed at Abaaoud. Abbaoud has in the past boasted of a close call he had when he passed through a European checkpoint as police studied a photo of him. The kuffar (unbelievers) were blinded by Allah. I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!, Abaaoud told the Islamic State magazine Dabiq. This was nothing but a gift from Allah, said a bearded Abaaoud who appears in an accompanying photo holding up a Koran in one hand and a black Islamic State flag in the other in front of a US-made Humvee.