The jihadi who masterminded the November Paris attacks told a friend he commanded 90 “kamikaze-in-waiting” terrorists who snuck into Europe by pretending to be migrants and refugees, a leaked international police report reveals.
The report leaked to The New York Times takes on new urgency after three explosions claimed by the Islamic State in Brussels Tuesday left at least 31 dead. The Paris mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, whose network could potentially be linked to the Brussels attack, told his friend he and 90 jihadis all got into Europe by hiding among the flood of migrants pouring out of North Africa and the Middle East.
“Abaaoud clearly presented himself as the commander of these 90 kamikazes-in-waiting, and that he had come directly to France in order to avoid the failures they had experienced in the past,” the friend recounted to police investigating the Paris attack, according to The New York Times. (RELATED: Explained In Two Minutes: The Insane Rise Of ISIS)
Authorities presented their findings on the Paris attack in a 55-page report to France’s Interior Ministry and was obtained by The New York Times.
Abaaoud was killed in a police raid on his residence in November, and another Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels last week. Abdeslam told interrogators he was “ready to restart something from Brussels,” Belgium’s Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said after his capture, reported ABC News.
Investigators found “a lot of weapons” and “a new network” of at least 30 terrorists in Brussels, Reynders said, adding: “We have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure that there are others.”
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