Leader of Paris Attack Returned to Crime Scene

parisringleader
parisringleader

An undated photograph of the man known as Abdelhamid Abaaoud that was published in the Islamic State's online magazine Dabiq and posted on social media.Reuters/Social Media Website via Reuters TV

The ringleader of the Paris attacks returned to the scene of the shootings and was near the Bataclan concert hall while police were still trying to oust the gunmen who killed 89 people there, the Paris prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who died last Wednesday when police raided a flat in St. Denis north of Paris, was captured on CCTV going into a metro station near where a car with three assault rifles inside had been abandoned.

Prosecutor Francois Molins said Abaaoud emerged from the underground at Nation station on the night of the attacks, Nov. 13. The phone Abaaoud was believed to be using was detected in the 10th, 11th and 12th districts of Paris, including near the Bataclan hall, between 22.28 (2128 GMT) and 00.28, he told a news conference.

Eleven days after the attacks that killed 130 people, investigators are still piecing together who did what and when.

Molins said they had still to identify a man shot dead by police in the concert hall, the two suicide bombers at the national stadium who had passed through Greece in October and the third person to die when police raided the St. Denis flat.

He said the DNA of the person in the apartment, who investigators believe blew himself up, was found on one of the AK47 assault rifles in the abandoned car. The fingerprints of Abaaoud and dead attacker Brahim Abdeslam were on the other two.

This meant it was possible that the third man in the flat had also taken part in the shootings but this had not been confirmed, the prosecutor said.

Investigators had found a 9 mm pistol, fragments of grenades and two suicide vests in the St. Denis apartment.

Molins also said Abaaoud had been planning to attack the capital's La Defense business district, as first reported by Reuters on Nov. 18.

The suicide vest found on Monday south of Paris was still being analyzed but it was of the same type as those used by the other suicide bombers during the attacks, Molins added.

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