Official: Paris attacks organizer was planning more carnage
PARIS — The man believed to have planned the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds likely planned to carry out another suicide bombing days later in the French capital's business district, the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud and an accomplice are believed to have been planning an attack for Nov. 18 or 19, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
Abaaoud was among three people killed during a police raid on an apartment in a northern Paris suburb in the early hours of Nov. 18. His female cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, died of asphyxia apparently from the explosive vest detonated by a third person, who hasn't been identified, the prosecutor said.
Molins said the unidentified third person is believed to have been the accomplice with whom Abaaoud would have carried out an attack on La Defense, the high-rise district on the western edge of Paris that is headquarters to major companies.
The prosecutor said he “can't be, and doesn't want to be more precise” on the details suggesting such an attack had been planned. Information obtained Thursday suggested “that the two attackers — Abaaoud and the man we found by his side in the apartment — were planning an attack consisting of blowing themselves up at La Defense either on Wednesday the 18th or Thursday the 19th,” Molins said.
The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State group, targeted people enjoying a Friday night out at a packed concert hall, a restaurant terrace, a cafe and a friendly soccer match between France and Germany. In the hours after the killings, Abaaoud is believed to have returned to the sites of at least some of the attacks, including the Bataclan concert hall, while special police forces were still there.
On Tuesday, a judge handed down terrorism-related charges to Jawad Bendaoud, the only person in France known to be facing such charges directly linked to the Nov. 13 attacks. He was charged with criminal association and detention of incendiary or explosive substances linked to a terrorist enterprise.
Bendaoud acknowledged in a television interview giving shelter to two people from Belgium in his home in Saint-Denis but said he didn't know who they were.
The attack has been traced to a network of people with ties to France and Belgium, where Abaaoud was from. Belgian authorities charged a fifth suspect Tuesday with terror-related offenses relating to the Paris attack, while the federal prosecutor's office issued an international arrest warrant for Mohamed Abrini, who is being tracked by Belgian and French police. Abrini was seen with Salah Abdeslam — another top fugitive suspect in the attacks.
