A video has surfaced supposedly showing the moment when Paris suicide bomber Brahim Abdeslam attempted to detonate his explosive vest in a Parisian cafe. The vest malfunctioned and only killed Abdeslam.
The video shows a man who is allegedly Abdeslam entering the small cafe Comptoir Voltaire. The series of still shots then shows him walking to the center of the cafe in order to get close to the largest crowd of patrons. He then lowers his head and detonates the bomb. According to initial after-action reports in November, the device had malfunctioned and only partially detonated. The explosives on Abdeslam’s back appear to detonate, jettisoning him to the rear of the cafe. Debris is seen covering cafe, while what appears to be Abdeslam’s body is in the lower right hand corner.
You can view the video in its entirety here. (Warning: graphic content)
A registered nurse named David, who asked only to only be identified by his first name, was present at the cafe at the moment of the explosion. He told the Independent he found an injured man in the remnants of the explosion and began attempting to resuscitate him via CPR. David did not know it initially, but that man was Abdeslam.
“He had a large opening on his side, about 30 centimeters,” said David.
David had assumed the explosion was most likely some kind of gas explosion, but an initial examination of Abdeslam’s wounds revealed that was not the case.
“When you lift a t-shirt and you see wires, you know that’s not normal,” said David. “The first wire I saw was red. I think that was the detonator. There was something at the end.”
Abdeslam would not survive his injuries, though his brother, Salah, the alleged mastermind behind the attacks, would eventually escape. After going on the run for several months, Salah was arrested March 18 in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium. Though Brahim did not kill anyone, his fellow terrorists would kill 130 and injure another 368.
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