Financing of the terror attacks in France

Introduction

France became a more targeted country for Islamic terror in the past 6 years. From a single individual terror attack to a major multi – targeted attacks.

In four reports we made a comparative study on four major attacks which took place from 2012 to 2016 in Toulouse, Paris and Nice. The main target of this report is to unravel the financing scheme of these attacks.

We divided the financing into two main aspects, financing the recruiting and radicalization of the terrorists, and funding the specific terror attacks. As far as we see there is luck of information, in the overt media regarding the financial activity, yet, the few info available show the following:

• Financing of the recruitment in mosques and imams is generated mostly out of the Muslim Brotherhood entities, as UOIF, Qatar (directly and through Qaradawi and his foundation) and the French government.
• The actual funding for the attacks was made mostly by local assistance and the attackers themselves, yet, we do not know mostly what the source of the finances was (the finances to the Bataclan attack was given probably by ISIS representative in Europe).

The terror attacks

The Toulouse Attack [1][2]

• The Toulouse and Montauban shootings were a series of three guns attacks committed by Mohammed Merah from March 11 to 19, 2012, targeting first French Army soldiers, later children and a teacher from a Jewish school in the cities of Montauban and Toulouse in the Midi – Pyrenees region of France. In total, the shooter killed seven people and wounded five, four seriously.
• Merah is a terrorist Islamist Franco – Algerian who perpetrated the killings of March 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban. He was finally shot dead after a 32 – hour arrest attempt.
• The trial related to his crimes took place in Paris from October 2 to November 2, 2017. His brother Albdelkader Merah was found guilty of criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist company and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Fettah Malki, who provided weapons and a bullet-proof vest to Mohammed Merah, was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment.

The Attackers

Mohammed Merah [3]

• Mohammed is born October 10, 1988 in Toulouse and died March 22, 2012 in the same city following a raid of the RAID – special unit of anti-terrorist police.
• He spent his early childhood in Toulouse. He grew up in a climate of domestic violence, religious intolerance and anti-Semitism. After the divorce of his parents, he moved with his mother, his brothers and sisters in an apartment near the city center and then in the neighborhood of Bellefontaine (Mirail). From the age of six, he is in host families and homes.
• In 2006, 18-year-old Mohammed Merah was listed in the wanted persons index under the heading “State Security” for his relations with the Salafist movement in Toulouse, particularly with Sabri Essid arrested on the road to jihad in Iraq. In theory, it must be reported in the event of a roadside check or border crossing.
• Between 2007 and 2009 Mohammed Merah stayed in prison for 15 conditional sentences.
• In 2010 he went on a trip without attracting the attention of the outside secret services, in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, then Tajikistan and Afghanistan, to finish in Egypt with his elder brother Abdelkader and his sister Souad – they both studied in a Koranic institute. He is then controlled by Afghan police in Kandahar, Afghanistan, who warns NATO security and puts him on a plane to Kabul, from where he returned to France.
• In 2011 Mohammed Merah spent two months in Pakistan “to look for brothers”. He eventually finds Taliban who put him in touch with a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda. He was trained shooting in a camp in Waziristan, promising to carry out attacks in France. Returned from Pakistan, Merah was summoned for the first time by the DCRI (General Directorate for Internal Security). He explained that his trip to Afghanistan in 2010 was a tourist trip and his trip to Pakistan was to “look for a wife”. The Paris police conclude that the meeting “did not allow the link between Mohammed Merah and a possible jihadist network”.

Accomplices

Sabri Essid [4.1][4.2]

• Sabri known also as, Abou Doujana, is born in 1985 in France. He is Mohammed Merah’s step brother.
• The journey of Sabri Essid, a French-Tunisian, is deeply rooted in the first historical network of Toulouse jihadist fighters, in the early 2000s. The investigators of anti-terrorism discovered for the first time his name, associated with that of his father, in an anonymous letter referring to plans to attack supermarkets in Toulouse, and an American consul in France. It was 2005. Sabri Essid was 21 years old.
• Belonging to the radical Islamist group of Ariège charged with recruiting fighters in Iraq, he was arrested in December 2006 in Hama, Syria.
• He switched to radical Islam after the death of an uncle. It was part of the Salafist nebula grouping the Clain brothers (the voices of Daech claiming the Bataclan attacks in November 2015), Mohamed Megherbi (recently arrested in Syria), Laurent Lelièvre and the Albigensian Thomas Barnouin (arrested in Syria late December 2017) and Kevin Chassin (who blew himself up in Iraq in 2015).
• Around this group who frequented the mosque of Bellefontaine at Mirail before being excluded, gather formidable young followers who engaged in religious proselytism on the markets. Sabri Essid broadcasted messages of hate “miscreants” in the Izards district, in Toulouse. American hatred, hatred of the Jews, he worked with the body of young offenders at the crossroads between religious fanaticism and small banditry.
• Sabri Essid was the one who put Abdelkader Merah on the path of Salafism.
• According to journalist Mohamed Sifaoui, Mohammed Merah was in contact with the jihadist Sabri Essid and the brothers Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, one of the organizers of the Artigat recruitment chain for “jihad” in Iraq.

Fabien Clain [5]

• Converted to radical Islam between 1999 and 2000, Fabien Clain, known also as Omar is hosted for two months in Artigat with his wife in 2005.
• In 2004, the Clain brothers went to Egypt with their wives to study the Koran in the suburbs of Cairo.
• Since 2008, he was known to have links with Islamists in the Gaza Strip especially with the Islamic army. He became one of the organizers of the Artigat sector of recruitment and routing of volunteers to the holy war or “jihad” in Iraq, including Mohammed and Abdelkader Merah, Sabri Essid and the “guru” Olivier Corel. In July 2009, the 14th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Fabien Clain to a five-year term for criminal conspiracy. He is incarcerated in Paris. His mother also converted to Islam and religiously married Mohamed Essid.

Olivier Corel [6]

• Olivier Corel (his real name is Abdel Ilat Al-Dandachi), nicknamed “The White Emir” or Abdulilah Qorel, born November 29, 1946 in Homs, Syria, is known for his practice of radical Islam. He fled Syria because he made prison there as a Muslim brother (he is close to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood). Olivier arrived in France in 1973. He was naturalized French in 1983.
• He was first responsible for the Association of Islamic Students in France. In 1987, he founded the Islamic community of the Ariège hamlet of Lanes in the municipality of Artigat, in the Lèzevalley. In this community, he was teaching Salafism. His students: Mohammed, Souad and Abdelkader Merah, Sabri Essid, Fabien (aka Omar) and Jean-Michel Clain.

Abdelkader Merah [7.1][7.2]

• Abdelkader, born in 1982, was repeatedly arrested on charges of violence and drug trafficking as a minor. He was jailed for five months in 2003 after stabbing his brother Abdelghanib several times because he had married a French woman of Jewish origin. In 2005, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, including twenty months suspended for acts of violence against his mother and sisters.
• From 2006 to 2011, he spent long periods in Salafist madrasas in Cairo, including the Arab Institute Al Fajr where he studied the Koran with his sister Souad. He lets his hair and beard grow, changed his dress and called himself “bin Laden”. When his brother Mohammed was incarcerated, he came to see him several times and managed the visit permit cards. He sent him CDs and books on the Muslim religion, as well as pictures of Mecca.
• Abdelkader Merah was found guilty of criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise but acquitted on the complicity of assassinations. The specially constituted Assize Court sentenced Abdelkader Merah to 20 years’ imprisonment.

Fettah Malki [8.1][8.2]

• Charged and arrested in 2013 in Fleury-Mérogis, for complicity in assassination in connection with a terrorist company, acquisition and transfer of weapons, Fettah Malki provided Mohammed Merah with a bulletproof vest and an Uzi loaded submachine gun.
• Fettah Malki bought and sold a little of everything to anyone: cannabis, weapons, cars or stolen jewelry. Friend of Abdelkader Merah since 1998, he happened to attend his younger brother Mohamed, whom he cautiously described as “good knowledge of the neighborhood”. He did not pray, did not do Ramadan, did not set a foot at the mosque, and drank alcohol.
• Fettah Malki was found guilty of criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist company. The specially constituted Assize Court sentenced Fettah Malki to 14 years’ imprisonment.

Another example of radicalization

Kevin Chassin [9][10]

• Ahmad Abu Maryam al-Firansi, 25, a young French man, converted to Islam in 2009, who became radicalized until he made his way to Syria in 2013, and then Iraq.
• Faithful of the mosque Basso Cambo (Mirail), where he use to pray in 2010 alongside Mohammed Merah.
• In November 2014, the jihadist appeared with two consorts in a propaganda video where he was seen burning his French passport, calling for attacks to be committed in France.

The Mirail Mosque (Basso Cambo Mosque, Bellefontaine Mosque)

• It was in a video posted on YouTube [11] (July 21, 2017) that the Imam of Mirail, the Imam Daffé, announced the good news – the Mirail Mosque, currently under construction, may be completed. The four million euros needed for its construction have been collected.
• The first stone of this future mosque was laid in early 2016, when funding was already well advanced. Mostly financed by the faithful and some local companies. Only French funding, had promised the cultural association and Islamic culture in France (ACCIF), at the origin of the project. [12]
• “Every Friday, Imam Mamadou Daffé delivers sermons that have not always been moderated. Here, the Muslim Brotherhood holds the upper hand. They take care of everything”, wrote Le Monde, March 16, 2013. [13]

Mamadou Daffé [14]

• Mamadou Daffé, a scientist by profession, a researcher at the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology of the CNRS, generally passes for the ideal imam. Until then, this Malian has always aroused not only the respect of the elected officials of his city, but also the benevolence of the public authorities.
• “This man is dangerous,” however, warn some people who have alerted the press after having the curiosity to listen to his preaches broadcast week after week on the website of the ACCIF, the association that manages this place of worship entirely financed by private funds. This imam professes the unity of Islam, but of an Islam of war rather than peace, which mutilates, slaughters and kills.”
• He is also part of the teaching team of the high school Alif.

The private institute Alif [15] (high school)

• Private Institute Alif (IPA) was created in 2004.
• Alif is a member of the FNEM (National Federation of Muslim Private Education). [16]
• School not contracted with the State but made a request for association with the State before 2015.
• Abdelfattah Rahhaoui known as the “white wolf”, was already convicted for opening classes illegally in Alif College, which he officially created in 2009 but which has already hosted students, without being declared, for years. A structure that was, according to our information, designated by the general information as “center of the Toulouse Salafist movement”: the Merah were attending courses in Arabic”, wrote L’Obs, January 19, 2017. [17]

Abdelfattah Rahhaoui [18]

• At the start of the Christmas holidays, the private Muslim school Al-Badr will not reopen in the Toulouse district of Bellefontaine. On 17 November 2016, the Toulouse Criminal Court ordered the immediate closure of this non-contract establishment for non-respect of the teaching of the common core of National Education. In the viewfinder of the academic inspection, its director, AbdelFattah Rahhaoui was also sentenced to suspended prison and forbidden to run a school. He was given two months suspended for violence committed against two former students of the establishment and for the establishment of a clandestine college, as well as 4 months of suspended imprisonment for not having respected the compulsory education.
• These penalties are accompanied by 8,000 euros in fines and 1,100 euros in damages. AbdelFattah Rahhaoui has already announced that he will appeal. The latter had already been sentenced in 2010 for having opened Alif High School in 2005 without prior agreement from the rectorate.
• As for the association that runs the school of 85 students, it is permanently banned from opening a new school.

The National Federation of Muslim Private Education (FNEM) [20]

• Officially created on 3/22/2014 it is the first representative body of private Muslim education in France.
• Makhlouf Mamèche is the president of the FNEM, and also vice-president of the UOIF.
• On 6/1/2014, the FNEM organized at the European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH, Funding from Qatar, related to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi) a training seminar at Saint Denis for all those – and they were about fifty, who had already opened a school, a college, a high school or who carried such an imminent project of opening.
• On 11/25/2014, a FNEM delegation was welcomed to the Ministry by the minister’s cabinet director and then received by his political advisor: “the structuring of Muslim education was hoped, expected and encouraged by the Ministry of National Education”.
• The FNEM (UOIF member) is present in meetings at the occasion of colloquia or other events (such as the annual gathering of Muslims of France at Le Bourget, RAMF – organized by the UOIF).

UOIF (FIOE members)

• The Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF) controls the main private Muslim schools under contract with the State but also, more or less directly, forty schools out of contract in Paris, Marseille, Lille, Lyon and Grenoble among others. [19]
• The UOIF was founded in 1983 in Meurthe-et-Moselle by two foreign students, Abdallah Ben Mansour (Tunisia) and Mahmood Zuhair (Iraq). In 2004, the UOIF covers about 250 organizations. The UOIF owns about 30 mosques and manages about 200 others. This is the French chapter of the FIOE, which is partly funded by the Gulf States money. [21]
• Makhlouf Mamèche is the Vice-President of the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France).

The Global MB Connection

• Established in 1989, Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) is an umbrella organization, which includes hundreds of member organizations in 28 European countries. Presided by Abdallah Ben Mansour, he previously held the post of Secretary-General of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF). FIOE’s headquarters are located at 34 Rue de la Pacification, B-1210, Brussels. [22.1][22.2]

• The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is a Dublin-based private foundation, founded in London on 29-30 March 1997 on the initiative of the FIOE, the umbrella group comprising the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. The ECFR is headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi (financially supported by Qatar and based in the country).

• The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) was launched on July 11, 2004 in conjunction with a visit by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi to London for a meeting of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Qaradawi is the IUMS President while many prominent individuals tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas serve as IUMS Trustees. [23]

Charlie Hebdo and the HyperCacher

The Charlie Hebdo Attack

• On 7 January 2015 at about 11:30 local time, two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they killed 12 people and injured 11 others.
• The gunmen identified themselves as belonging to the Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, which took responsibility for the attack. [1]
• Charlie Hebdo had attracted attention for its controversial depictions of Muhammad. Hatred for Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons, which made jokes about Islamic leaders as well as the Islamic prophet Muhammad, is considered to be the principal motive for the massacre. [2]
• In March 2013, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, commonly known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released a hit list in an edition of their English – language magazine Inspire. The list included Stéphane Charbonnier (Charlie Hebdo editor who died in this shooting) and others whom AQAP accused of insulting Islam. [3]

The HyperCacher Attack

• Several related attacks followed in the Île-de-France region on 7–9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege where the terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, held 19 hostages, of whom he murdered 4 Jews.
• During the standoff in Dammartin-en-Goële, Amedy Coulibaly, who had met the brothers Kouachi in Fleury Merogis prison, was reportedly in contact with the Kouachi brothers as the sieges progressed, and told the police that he would kill hostages if the brothers were harmed. Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers died within minutes of each other. [4]

The Attackers

Saïd Kouachi

• The brothers Saïd Kouachi (7 September 1980 – 9 January 2015) and Chérif Kouachi, were French citizens born in Paris to Algerian immigrants, and were orphaned at a young age. Both were placed in a foster home in Rennes. After two years, they were moved to an orphanage in Corrèze in 1994. The brothers moved to Paris around 2000.

Chérif Kouachi

• Chérif Kouachi (29 November 1982 – 9 January 2015), also known as Abu Issen, was part of an informal gang that met in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris (the Buttes Chaumont network founded by Farid Benyettou) to perform military-style training exercises and sent would-be jihadists to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
• Chérif Kouachi was arrested at age 22 in January 2005 when he and another man were about to leave for Syria, at the time a gateway for jihadists wishing to fight US troops in Iraq.
• He was sentenced to Fleury-Mérogis Prison, where he met Amedy Coulibaly. In prison, they found a mentor, Djamel Beghal, who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2001 for his part in a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris. [5]
• Upon leaving prison, Chérif Kouachi married and got a job in a fish market on the outskirts of Paris. He became a student of Farid Benyettou, a radical Muslim preacher at the Adda’wa Mosque in the 19th district of Paris.
• Saïd Kouachi, unlike his brother, is known to the authorities for a single custody in the framework of the Buttes-Chaumont network. In 2011, Saïd received training in fighting and using small arms in Yemen.[6] He had been on the blacklist of terrorists in the United States for a few years. Spotted because of his trip to Yemen via the Sultanate of Oman, he is tapped between 2011 and 2014, (fifteen months of listening and four months of physical surveillance). The CNCIS (National Commission for Security Interception Control) puts an end to wiretapping in June 2014 for lack of evidence related to terrorism, the wiretaps having only revealed allusions to a counterfeit trade in clothing and sports shoes. [7.1][7.2]

Amedy Coulibaly

• Amedy Coulibaly (27 February 1982 – 9 January 2015) was a Malian-French man who was the prime suspect in the Montrouge shooting, in which a municipal police officer was shot and killed, and was the hostage-taker and gunman in the Hypercacher Kosher Supermarket siege, in which he killed four hostages before being killed by police. He was a close friend of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo shooting, to which Coulibaly’s shootings were connected. He said he synchronized his attacks with the Kouachi brothers. Coulibaly had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. [8]
• In 2004, Coulibaly was sentenced to six years in Fleury-Mérogis Prison for armed bank robbery. There, he met Chérif Kouachi. He is believed to have converted to radical Islam in prison at the same time as Chérif Kouachi. In prison he also met al-Qaeda recruiter Djamel Beghal. He later said that his discovery of Islam in prison changed him. [9]

Accomplices

Hayat Boumeddiene [10.1][10.2][10.3]

• Hayat Boumeddiene (born 26 June 1988) is currently being sought by French police as a suspected accomplice of her common law husband Amedy Coulibaly. She arrived in Turkey five days before the attacks and was last tracked on 10 January 2015 to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-controlled border town of Tell Abyad in Syria. Police say she was frequently in contact with Chérif Kouachi’s wife, including 500 calls between them in 2014.

Peter Cherif [11.1][11.2]

• Peter Cherif is born in 1982 in France. Converted to Islam in 2003. Radicalized by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Farid Benyettou was his mentor. He was a member of the Buttes-Chaumont network.
• He left for Damascus in May 2004, saying he was going to join friends studying at a Koranic school. The school was known as a way station for European fighters on their way to Iraq.
• U.S. troops in Iraq captured Cherif near Fallujah on 2 December 2004. Cherif was detained, unarmed, at a checkpoint and imprisoned at Camp Bucca. In August 2005, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib prison.
• He was convicted in Baghdad in July 2006 for illegally crossing the border, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He escaped in March 2007 in a prison break by the Islamic State of Iraq. He traveled to Syria, where he was arrested, extradited, and served 18 months in jail in France. He was released pending trial and fled the country to Yemen. He was sentenced to five years in prison, in absentia, for being a member of a terrorist organization on 16 August 2012.
• In the summer of 2011, he was present at a meeting with two other men in Yemen, to plan the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Those two men were Salim Benghalem and Chérif Kouachi. Peter Cherif helped provide Kouachi with cash and a few days of al Qaeda training, according to French and U.S. intelligence officials.
• According to his United Nations listing, he has been involved in the recruitment of foreign fighters and facilitated their travel to Yemen from Tunisia, via Oman. He is also suspected to have been identified in 2013 on a speedboat, during a reconnaissance operation along the Hadramawt coast of Yemen in order to plan a maritime terrorist attack.
• He is living with his wife and children in the town of Mukalla, Hadramawt province, Yemen. He is believed to be working for the “legal service” of AQAP.

Djamel Beghal [12.1][12.2]

• Djamel Beghal (born 2 December 1965 in Bordj Bou Arréridj, Algeria) is a French-Algerian man convicted of terrorism.
• Djamel Beghal was arrested for the first time in 1994 during a wave of arrests in the movement of the GIA. He left for the United Kingdom, where he attended the mosque of Finsbury Park and invested in the fundraising for Chechnya.
• He is then called “Abu Hamza” and travels a lot between Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. He meets one of the most prominent and virulent leaders of radical Islamism, Omar Abu Omar Qatada, a Palestinian refugee in London since 1994, a former jihadist in Afghanistan, and considered to be a member of al-Qaeda.
• In November 2000, he flew to Afghanistan with his wife. He was arrested on 28 July 2001 in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), from Islamabad, after a stay in the Afghan camps, where he learned to make explosive devices. Recognizing his membership in the Bin Laden network, he says he was mandated to form a cell on French territory.
• In March 2005, French authorities convicted Beghal and five others for planning attacks, and Beghal began serving his 10-year sentence for an evasion project in 2010 of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem.
• During his time in prison, he met and mentored fellow prisoners Chérif Kouachi, as well as Amedy Coulibaly. Beghal is expelled to Algeria in 2018.

Salim Benghalem [13]

• The alleged sponsor of the January 2015 attacks and suspected of having a link with the terrorists of November 13, 2015, the Frenchman Salim Benghalem would be one of the executioners of the Islamic State organization.
• Settled in Syria since 2013, he was sentenced (in his absence) to fifteen years in prison by the Paris Criminal Court for the transportation of several French to Syria, via a dismantled chain in November 2013. He attended the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly.
• He is reported dead in Syria by his family on May 10, 2018.

The Mosque Adda’wa (known also as Stalingrad Mosque)

• The ACIMA, Islamic Worship Association Adda’wa Mosque, is an association founded on May 25, 1969 located at 39 Rue de Tanger 75019 Paris which manages the Mosquee Adda’wa. The Kouachi brothers and Farid Benyettou attended this mosque.
• Larbi Kechat (member of the Muslim Theological Council of France) is the Rector and Imam of the Adda’wa Mosque and co-founder of the Adda’wa Mosque in 1979.
• During 2001, the Buttes-Chaumont network is created and organized around the Adda’wa Mosque, at the time “one of the largest Muslim places of worship in Europe” with 5,000 worshipers every Friday. Cherif Kouachi, Said Kouachi, and Peter Cherif attended to this mosque.
• Cherif Kouachi, Said Kouachi, Peter Cherif, Boubaker El Hakim, and Redouane El Hakim among others were members of this Buttes-Chaumont network. [14.1][14.2]
• Founding members, according to the YouTube video are: Hadj Mohammed Kerzazi; Mahmoud Ait Chabban; Hadj Mohammed Imedjouben; Abdelkader Boubekri (Morocco); Abd Rahmen Ben Abou (Morocco); Cherif Boudemegh (Association President); Mohammed Ben Aissa (Morocco); Khaled Bedda (Algeria); Daoud Mahfoud.

In the video:

• at 12:20: “The day we decided to buy the mosque, our Egyptian brothers were of great generosity” (Hadj Mohammed Kerzazi);
• at 13:02: “Because I was witnesses when they brought back money from Egypt to France” (Hadj Mohammed Kerzazi);
• at 18:00: “As Larbi Kechat did not have social security, he was paid but without a pay slip. Chems Eddine has proposed that we buy something for Larbi Kechat to be managing and so he would have pay slips and at least insurance. And Hadj Tighlit approved the idea. We borrowed money from the mosque to buy a butcher’s shop;
• at 18 rue d’Aubervilliers, 470,000 Francs in 1992 and Kechat was the manager to receive a pension. […] Then we bought a butcher shop at 32, rue du Maroc, and Kechat was still the manager. He did not work but the profit from sales was his. He had a salary of 25,000 Francs. We ended up selling butchery in 1998. […] And he threw us out.” (Hadj Mohammed Imedjouben);
• at 23:00: “When he went to Kuwait with Hadj Tighlit to collect donations, brothers took charge of them during their stay, so when he returned to Paris, Hadj Tighlit returned the money he had taken for eventual expenses, as for Larbi Kechat he kept everything.” (Hadj Mohammed Kerzazi).

The Buttes Chaumont Network [15]

• The Buttes-Chaumont network is created during 2001, organized around the Adda’wa Mosque. The main character of this network is Farid Benyettou, a cleaner during the day, a preacher in the evening and close to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which became al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2007. Farid advised his students to go to Damascus. Young people enrolled in religious schools such as the Abu Nour Institute or Al Fath. In Al Fath, there are 70 different nationalities (European, American, Asian, Arab). From primary school to university, 6000 students. Boubaker El Hakim was in this institute from 2001 to 2002. This institute is the official reason for the departure of the young people to then arrive in Iraq. Imam Cheick Smail Zabibi of the institute’s mosque encourages the French to make jihad.
• Boubaker El Hakim is considered “one of the brains” of the network. Cherif Kouachi bought a flight ticket for Syria in 2005 but was arrested just before. Boubaker El Hakim is the first member of the Buttes-Chaumont sector to travel to the Middle East. In July 2002, just 19 years old, pretending to study Arabic and Islam, and like most jihadist candidates waiting for US intervention in Iraq, he attended for six months the Salafist schools Al Fateh Al Islami and Zahra from Damascus from where he smuggles to Iraq.
• Back in Paris in January 2003, he participated with Farid Benyettou in the development in the 19th district network-of sending young jihadist volunteers in Iraq. Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi are among those who listen to his stories. On March 13, 2003, a national radio broadcast a topic dedicated to training camps set up by Saddam Hussein on the eve of the war in Iraq. The journalist hands his microphone to a young French: “All my friends in the 19th, they have to come to make jihad, I’m here, it’s me, Abu Abdallah (aka Farid Benyettou), I’m in Iraq, we make jihad, all my brothers who are there, come to defend Islam. The author of this jihad call, identified several months later, is Boubaker El Hakim. In April 2017, the Iraqi army estimates that Boubaker el Hakim, Franco-Tunisian jihadist who is linked to the attack against Charlie Hebdo and that the Americans say they killed last year, could in fact still be alive.
• In January 2005, Farid was arrested at home by the police. After two days in custody, Farid admits to being “the Emir of Buttes Chaumont”.
• This network is dismantled in 2005 then, its members judged in 2008. Cherif Kouachi and Peter Cherif were members of this network.

The Muslim Theological Council of France (CTMF) connection

• Imams and scholars of Islam in France, in the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, have created a theological council that does not intend to replace the representative bodies, but could enact religious legal opinions – also known as fatwas, announced this organization on May 29, 2015.
• The Muslim Theological Council of France (CTMF) was born at a meeting in Paris of about fifty theologians, imams and preachers, said a statement. It is headed by a nine-member executive bureau, including Ahmed Jaballah, former president of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF), the main relay in the Hexagon of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• It includes the names of Larbi Kechat – rector of the Adda’wa mosque in Paris, Larbi Bechri-head of the training institute of UOIF in the Nièvre (EIHS), and the imam and khatib (preacher) Mohamed Bajrafil. [16]

Farid Benyettou [17.1][17.2]

• Farid Benyettou was born on May 10, 1981. He grew up in the 19th district. His father was maintenance officer. Farid has 3 brothers and 1 sister. His father finds out that he has been adopted and turns to religion. Farid starts going to the mosque, learning Arab and going to religious conferences. He goes on vacation thanks to the Muslim Brothers (from Chateau-Chinon, IESH, European Institute of Human Sciences). He feels concerned about politics (Bosnian Muslims) at the age of 11.
• In 1994, his grandmother (the mother of Farid’s father) dies. His father becomes an alcoholic. Farid “loses” his father and found “fathers” among Muslim brothers and Islamic Rescue (in Massy, suburbs of Paris, presided by Lhaj Thami Breze – UOIF, FIOE).
• At 15 years old (1996), Farid discovered the Salafia (living in the time of Prophet Muhammad). Farid is trained at 16 by his brother-in-law Youssef Zemmouri (Youssef Islam): Algerian Islamist close to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC and then AQMI) is arrested for a bombing project at the 1998 World Cup and he is sent back to Algeria. Then Farid wears the Qamis and the turban, arouses respect and admiration in the neighborhood because he affirms his faith in Islam with this outfit. In high school Voltaire (Paris 11e), he becomes the preacher, “the imam Voltaire”. He advises girls to wear headscarf and it works. He feels that people are paying attention to what he says. In high school, teachers threaten to exclude Farid. He leaves by himself. Since 1997, Farid is monitored by the police.
• During the attacks of September 11, 2001, he sees the symbolic aspect and has no state of mind for the victims. Ben Laden is his hero. “We will save the world”. Human beings are seen as categories (mistresses, traitors). In 2002, Farid becomes Abu Abdallah and gave lessons discreetly to the Adda’wa Mosque (Paris 75019), including to Cherif Kouachi, who wanted to go to Iraq. In 2004, nearly 20,000 people gathered on Saturday, January 17, in France to demonstrate, at the call of Islamist organizations, against the bill prohibiting in France the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols at school. Farid encourages him in his project. During this event, Farid Benyettou and Cherif Kouachi (Charlie Hebdo Attack) can be seen side by side.
• In January 2005, Farid was arrested at home by the police. After two days in custody, Farid admits to being “the Emir of Buttes Chaumont”. In prison, he takes the role of preacher, makes calls to the prayer from the window and leads the celebrations of Laid. He is then transferred to Fresnes Prison. After 3 years, he is sentenced to 6 years in prison. He does 4 (until 2009). 2 years at Fresnes and then he was transferred to the Prison of Osny. When he gets out of prison he goes back to see the jihadists “it was my family, my references, an addiction”. He then becomes a nurse and receives a state scholarship. In March 2012, during the assassinations committed by Mohammed Merah, Farid feels guilty. He continues his studies and agrees to treat women. He keeps in touch with Cherif Kouachi (he does not know if Cherif wants to bring him back to jihadism or if he wants to talk to him about his pedophile problem).
• In November 2014, Farid sees for the last time Cherif Kouachi. January 7, 2015, attack at Charlie Hebdo. Farid is put forward by the media. He interrupts his training as a nurse at the Hospital La Pitie Salpetriere. He contacts Dounia Bouzar (anthropologist) who enrolls him in his program of deradicalization after long telephone conversations. Dounia trusts Farid as he tells him secrets about jihadism. He then works with Dounia. Farid would have saved a thirty of young people to go to Syria. Dounia was commissioned for a year by the Ministry of the Interior.
• On a French Tv Show “Complement d’enquete” (4/13/17), Farid Benyettou explains that he is writing a new book on the testimonies of repentant, which he meets through Dounia.

Today there is no precise information in the open concerning Farid Benyettou.

Ahmed Jaballah [18]

• Born in Tunisia in 1956, he holds a Master’s degree in Islamic Sciences from Zeitouna University in Tunisia. Installed in France since 1980. He is a theologian, imam.
• President of UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) between 1984 and 1992, then between 2011 and 2012.
• Co-founder in 1992 of the European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH) of Chateau-Chinon, private institute of Islamic sciences and Arabic language working on the training of European Muslim religious leaders.
• Co-founder in 2001 of the European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH) of Paris to Saint-Denis.
• President of the Muslim Theological Council of France – CTMF (created in May 2015).
• Founding member of the European Council of Fatwa and Research (ECFR LTD).
• Member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).
• Member from 2010 to 2012 of the association “Religions for Peace”, dedicated to interreligious dialogue.
• Participant in many interreligious conferences in France, in Europe and throughout the world (several participations in the week of meeting Christian-Muslim SERIC, conference in 2000 in the Vatican under the aegis of Pope Jean Paul II).
• Participant in the three circles of dialogue with Islam initiated by the Ministry of the Interior.
• Member of EUROPE TRUST.
• Member of the ICCI (Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland) and IslamIreland.ie [19.1][19.2]

Today there is no precise information in the newspapers concerning Ahmed Jaballah. His last public appearance was on March 30, 2018 at the 35th annual gathering of Muslims of France (RAMF) at the Parc des Expositions Paris-le Bourget, organized by the UOIF. Among the speakers at this meeting: Abdallah Ben Mansour (FIOE), Larbi Kechat, IESH, CBSP. [20]

Larbi Kechat [21]

• Larbi Kechat was born on April 25, 1945 in Algeria in the region of Setif. Son of imam, he obtains a license of Arabic in Algeria. He got married and had two children before coming to France. He arrives in Paris and enrolls at La Sorbonne to take his first courses in French and French civilization. In 1979 he made his first preaching at the Adda’wa Mosque (the Kouachi brothers and Farid Benyettou attended this mosque).
• The Adda’wa Mosque belongs to the Islamic Worship Association (ACI) founded by a group of about ten workers in 1969. It settles firstly on the ground floor of a hotel in Belleville then has moved to Ménilmontant under the direction of Mohand Tighlit who hired Larbi Kechat. In 1980, the mosque moved to 39, rue de Tanger 75019 Paris in the former Bouchara warehouses that have just been bought. In 2001, the Paris City Council headed by Bertrand Delanoe agreed to provide a building permit to the mosque of Tangier Street. The existing building is then razed in 2005 to build a mosque-cathedral, building whose cost of work is estimated at about 15 to 17 million euros. During this period, the Adda’wa mosque is domiciled in a prefabricated building installed at the Porte de la Villette on land made available by the Paris City Hall.
• On the website of the Mosquee, it is written “ACIMA 39 rue de Tangier Paris 19, has no connection or relationship with the mosquee located at the Porte de la Vilette Paris 19.”

Today there is no precise information in the newspapers concerning Larbi Kechat. His last public appearance was on March 30, 2018 at the 35th annual gathering of Muslims of France (RAMF) at the Parc des Expositions Paris-le Bourget, organized by the UOIF. Among the speakers at this meeting: Abdallah Ben Mansour (FIOE), Ahmed Jaballah, IESH, CBSP. [20]

The Global MB Connection

• Established in 1989, Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) is an umbrella organization, which includes hundreds of member organizations in 28 European countries. Presided by Abdallah Ben Mansour, he previously held the post of Secretary-General of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF). FIOE’s headquarters are located at 34 Rue de la Pacification, B-1210, Brussels. [22.1][22.2]
• The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is a Dublin-based private foundation, founded in London on 29-30 March 1997 on the initiative of the FIOE, the umbrella group comprising the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. The ECFR is headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi (financially supported by Qatar and based in the country).
• Ahmed Jaballah is a founding member of the European Council of Fatwa and Research (ECFR LTD).
• The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) was launched on July 11, 2004 in conjunction with a visit by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi to London for a meeting of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Qaradawi is the IUMS President while many prominent individuals tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas serve as IUMS Trustees. [23]
• Ahmed Jaballah is a member of the IUMS.

UOIF (FIOE members)

• The UOIF was founded in 1983 in Meurthe-et-Moselle by two foreign students, Abdallah Ben Mansour (Tunisia) and Mahmood Zuhair (Iraq). In 2004, the UIOF covers about 250 organizations. The UIOF owns about 30 mosques and manages about 200 others. This is the French chapter of the FIOE, which is partly funded by the Gulf States money. [24]
• Ahmed Jaballah was President of UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) between 1984 and 1992, then between 2011 and 2012.

Funding of Islamic activities in France

• In 2004, 18 million euros are announced to build a mosque on the location of the warehouses a little old used for prayer. Fourteen years after the start of the work, only the basement is in the process of being finalized. At the same time, Imam Larbi Kechat, spreads a comfortable lifestyle, made of first-class tickets, loans in the coffers of the mosque and expensive holidays. The president of the Adda’wa Mosque Association, Ahmed Ouali, has therefore lodged a complaint about “breach of trust and fraud”. The latter estimates to L’Obs that six million euros have been committed for the first part of the works, and that the company in charge has billed only 3.8 million, a gap of two million, which have disappeared in nature. The case is being investigated, and Imam Kechat is still not being prosecuted.
• Regarding the financing of Islam from abroad, a parliamentary report gives official figures: six million from Morocco, two million from Algeria, 3.7 million from Saudi Arabia, etc. In contrast, informal money flows from wealthy individuals in Arab countries are never recorded. Farid Abdelkrim, president of the Young Muslims of France in the 2000s, gives an edifying testimony to the weekly: “Every year, I made the trip to Saudi Arabia and I returned large bundles of cash in my travel bag. On site, in Jeddah, I had an appointment with a motorcycle importer and a shoe manufacturer. Each time they gave me tens of thousands of euros. For his part, Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France), made the return trip several times a year. He met donors from a whole new level and of course brought in much larger sums. This paid for the Paris Air Show for our annual conferences.”
• In these cases, there is no transparency required of donors. The only “limit” was exposed in 2016 by Bruno Dalles, the manager of Tracfin (the body responsible for monitoring the financial circuits clandestine). Clearly, the organization only verifies that the money has no links to terrorism. “In one of our files, on a budget of 2 million euros, 1.3 million euros comes from a private person from Qatar, said Bruno Dalles. Transparency is weak, but it is not forbidden. We are limited to verifying that the person does not appear on any list of United Nations or intelligence services.”

Few controls, few rules, little transparency… However, the law requires associations to publish their accounts when they collect more than 153,000 euros per year. Only a few mosques like those of Cergy or Massy obey. [25]

France Stadium, Terraces, Bataclan Paris Attacks [1]

• Shootings and bomb blasts left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded, with more than 100 in a critical condition.
• First explosion at the Stade de France at 21:20. A man wearing a suicide belt was reportedly prevented from entering the stadium after a routine security check detected the explosives. The man backed away from security guards and detonated the explosives. Second man detonated his suicide vest outside a different stadium entrance at 21:30. A third suicide bomber blew himself at a fast-food outlet near the stadium at 21:53. The attackers all wore identical explosive vests.
• Gun attack on Rue Alibert. The first took place at about 21:25 in the 10th district, not far from the Place de la Republique. The gunmen arrived at the scene in a black Seat car.
• Diners shot in Rue de la Fontaine au Roi at 21:32. Second attack was on diners a few streets south of rue Alibert, in front of the Cafe Bonne Biere and La Casa Nostra pizzeria in rue de la Fontaine au Roi. Again, witnesses reported that the gunmen were travelling in a black Seat.
• Gun attack in Rue de Charonne at 21:36. Third shootings came to the south of the first restaurant attacks, at La Belle Equipe bar in the rue de Charonne in the 11th district. Witnesses said that the attackers arrived in a black Seat. Two men opened fire on the terrace of the cafe.
• Suicide bomb Boulevard Voltaire at 21:40. A few minutes later, an attacker killed himself by detonating a suicide bomb at the restaurant Le Comptoir Voltaire on the Boulevard Voltaire.
• Bataclan concert hall attack (21:40 – 00:20). The deadliest attack of the night came at a concert venue on Boulevard Voltaire, also in the 11th district, where Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was playing. The 1,500 – seat Bataclan hall was sold out. The three attackers were wearing suicide belts. Witnesses said they arrived in a black Volkswagen Polo then stormed in through the main entrance and into the back of the concert hall.

Attackers

Bilal Hadfi [2]

• The director of the Anneessens-Funck school in Brussels reportedly tried to warn the authorities without success, particularly after the departure of his student in Syria in 2015. According to documents consulted by De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, the teachers and the management had reported radical remarks and opinions in the classroom by the young man, who had been received by the director. Went to Syria in 2015.

Ahmad Al-Mohammad [3.1][3.2][3.3][3.4][3.5]

• Ammar Ramadan Mansour Mohamad al Sabaawi used fake Syrian passport, with the name of Ahmad Al-Mohammad – to enter Europe. According to a source quoted by AFP, the identity on the Syrian passport found at the Stade de France could match that of a soldier of Bachar Al-Assad killed several months ago, Ahmad Al-Mohammad, born 10 September 1990 in Idleb, northwestern Syria. A hitherto unknown name of the French anti-terrorist services.
• According to the report, from early 2016, intelligence services believe the man Ammar Ramadan Mansour Mohamad al Sabaawi is an Iraqi national from Mosul, believed to be in his twenties.
• Authorities believe Islamic State (which claimed responsibility for the attack) paid al-Sabaawi’s family the equivalent of $5,000 (about €4,670) in Iraqi dinar and a flock sheep after his death.

Mohammad Al-Mahmod a.k.a. Ali al-Iraki [4.1][4.2][4.3]

• The latest issue of “Dabiq”, ISIS’s propaganda magazine, was broadcast on jihadist networks. Mainly dedicated to Shiites, the magazine also pays tribute to the perpetrators of the 13 November attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis.
• Two of the Stade de France suicide bombers who had been found Syrian passports in the name of Mohammad al-Mahmod and Ahmad al-Muhammad are presented by “Dabiq” as Iraqis, under the names of “Ukasha al-Iraqi” and “Ali al -‘Iraqi”.
• The two men were registered in October among a group of migrants on the Greek island of Leros without being formally identified.

Salah Abdeslam [5.1][5.2][5.3][5.4][5.5][5.6][5.7][5.8][5.9][5.10]

• Salah Abdeslam, born September 15, 1989 in Brussels, is a French terrorist of Moroccan origin living and having grown up in Belgium, in the commune of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean.
• Affiliated with the Islamic State, he is involved in the attacks of 13 November 2015, which left 130 dead in the Paris region.
• It’s in 2010 that things seem to be rocking. At this date, Salah Abdeslam is imprisoned in a case of break and enter, which is also cited Abdelhamid Abaaoud, presented for a time as the brain of the attacks of 13 November. As a result of this sentence of one month’s imprisonment, Salah Abdeslam loses his work in early 2011.
• On the Balkan Route used from summer 2015 by hundreds of thousands of refugees, it convokes by four round trips from Brussels to German and Hungarian localities, almost all the commando who will commit these attacks as well as those of Brussels on March 22, 2016.
• He is identified by the police as involved in small-scale criminal activities. In 2011, he is convicted of robbery cases. He is described as a heavy consumer of cannabis and alcohol and a regular in gay bars in Brussels. In 2014, the antiterrorist section of the Belgian Federal Judicial Police (DR3) receives information from a “reliable” source about plans for attacks fomented by the Abdeslam brothers. It is then identified in at least eight European countries.
• On November 13, 2015, he is the tenant of the car used by the attackers of the room of Bataclan, and also deposits the three kamikazes in front of the Stade de France where they blow themselves up.
• His brother Brahim Abdeslam participates in shootings on Paris terraces and is in turn explode in a bar near the Place de la Nation.
• Salah Abdeslam for his part gave up at the last moment to do the same, or his equipment was defective. He then abandons his vehicle in the 18th district of Paris, then throws his explosive belt in a bin in Montrouge. He manages to escape from the Paris region with the help of accomplices who came to fetch him the night of the attacks to be deposited in Laeken before being taken to Schaerbeek where he remains hidden in an apartment of the Rue Henri Bergé during 20 days then to Forest before disappearing in Belgium.
• He was arrested during a police operation conducted in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean on March 18, 2016, after a 125-day trip. He is involved in a shooting in a forest apartment three days earlier, which is also a trial in Belgium. His involvement in the preparations for the attacks of 22 March 2016 in Brussels, which take place four days after his arrest, is also in question. Given to the French authorities on April 27, 2016, incarcerated in Fleury-Mérogis, he observes since then the most perfect mutism.
• On April 23, 2018, he was sentenced by the Belgian court for “attempted murder of a terrorist nature” to 20 years in prison, along with his accomplice Sofiane Ayari. The judgment for his actions during the Paris attacks should be held in the context of a more general trial on suspects from 13-November to 2020 at the Paris Court.
• According to a study by the Center for Terrorism Analysis led by Jean-Charles Brisard and published in November 2016 by the American journal Sentinel, Salah Abdeslam has an important logistical role, bringing several people from the terrorist cells of the attacks of 2015 and 2016 in France and in Belgium with rental vehicles.
• Between 30 August and 2 October, he made three round trips between Belgium and Hungary and one to Germany to bring back ten terrorists to Brussels. In the nine months before the attacks, Salah Abdeslam is identified in six different countries.
• On August 30, Salah Abdeslam recovers Bilal Hafdi, one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France and Chakib Akrouh, one of the terrorists of the terraces, in a rented BMW in Kiskőrös.
• On September 9, he recovers in Mercedes Mohamed Belkaïd and Najim Laachraoui at the station of Budapest-Keleti where they had waited for a week. Controlled on an Austrian highway at Aistersheim, they travel under the false identities of Soufiane Kayal and Samir Bouzid. The first will be killed during the police operation of 15 March 2016 in Forest and the second blew himself up at Brussels airport on 22 March 2016.
• On September 17, he recovers with an Audi A6 the three members of the Bataclan Commando Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, Samy Amimour and Foued Mohamed-Aggad.
• On October 2, he recovered in Ulm (Germany) with a BMW Ahmed Alkhald, Osama Krayem and Sofiane Ayari, the first probably joining Turkey a few days after November 13 and the last two being arrested in Belgium after the attacks of March 22 2016.
• In August 2015, Salah Abdeslam is with Ahmet Dahmani, both traveling from Italy to Greece by ferry. Dahmani is arrested on November 21 in Turkey in Antalya as an accomplice of the Islamic State terror network. An artificer from Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône (Val-d’Oise, Ile-de-France) indicates, after the attacks, that Abdeslam made a passage in his company in October 2015. He left the copy of his driver’s license to justify the purchase of a dozen electric detonators.
• According to the magazine Le Point, he reserved on the internet two rooms of the Apart’City hotel in Alfortville (Val-de-Marne) two days before the attacks. According to another source, the reservation ran from 11 to 17 November. Thanks to bank statements corroborated by video surveillance archives, the investigators were able to determine that Salah Abdeslam was in the company of Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian jihadist who passed through Syria, two days before the attacks, in a gas station in the Oise. (Hauts-de-France), on the A1 motorway, towards Paris. They are aboard the black Renault Clio driven by Abdeslam during the attacks. We find the trace of this Clio, three hours before the attacks at 18 pm on November 13 at Roissy airport. It is detected by a plate recognition system.
• As of November 16, Salah and Brahim Abdeslam are identified as having been in a Seat and a Volkswagen both rented by Salah. According to the testimony of a neighbor and friend of the brothers Abdeslam who saw them the day before the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, a big fight would have broken out in the siblings and one of them would have said not to move if he had not “pocketed the money”.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud [6.1][6.2][6.3][6.4][6.5][6.6][6.7]

• Abaaoud is reported to be a member of ISIL known as Battar Katiba, (the al-Battar Battalion) while fighting against Bashar al-Assad, during 2013. He returned to Belgium by the end of the same year. In 2014, independent journalists Étienne Huver and Guillaume Lhotellier visited the Syria-Turkey border, where they obtained photos and videos of Abaaoud’s time in Syria.
• Analysis of a telephone call established Abaaoud was in contact with Mehdi Nemmouche during January 2014. Nemmouche, a Franco-Algerian jihadist, shot and killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on May 24, 2014.
• Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam were in prison together in Belgium. Abaaoud was apparently connected to Sharia4Belgium (a Belgian radical Salafist organization which called for Belgium to convert itself into an Islamist state. In February 2015 the group was designated a terrorist organization by a Belgian judge. On 7 October 2012, Sharia4Belgium has claimed that the organization has been dissolved.)

Brahim Abdeslam [7.1][7.2][7.3]

• Brahim Abdeslam, born July 30, 1984 in Paris, where he died on November 13, 2015, is a French terrorist who grew up and resided in Belgium in the municipality of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean.
• He is believed to have been part of the team of three men who strafed several terraces, killing 39 people. Immediately after this operation, he conducted a suicide bombing operation in a café on Boulevard Voltaire, exploding his explosive belt. He is the elder brother of Salah Abdeslam, also involved in the attacks.
• The father of Brahim Abdeslam is a Moroccan born in Oran in Algeria in 1949. He lived in Aubervilliers in the Paris suburbs before settling in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. Her mother is a Moroccan woman from Rif. Both have French nationality. This explains that their five children, three boys and two girls, although all born in Brussels are also French.
• Brahim Abdeslam was sentenced on several occasions, for theft in 2005, for fraud and scam in 2010 and later for road traffic offenses.
• In March 2013, he became owner of the bar Les Béguines in Molenbeek-Sainẗ-Jean where his brother is the manager. The bar is closed/sold (according to the CAT report, Brisard) in November 2015 for consumption and sale of narcotics.
• In January 2015, Brahim Abdeslam tried to go to Syria and was intercepted by the Turkish authorities. Returned to Belgium, he is interrogated and quickly released, he is from that moment identified as radicalized. The publication, on January 24, 2016, of a propaganda video of the Islamic State organization on the attacks in Paris, in which we see Brahim Abdeslam practice shooting marks the thesis that he would have made a stay in Syria. The footage may have been shot in a former Syrian Army Division 17 training camp in Raqqa.

Chakib Akrouh [8]

• Born on August 27, 1990 in Belgium, he came from the district of Molenbeek.
• According to a source close to the case, his name was released late 2015 by the Belgian judicial authorities, on the basis of a photograph of Akrouh. He had left Brussels in early January 2015 in Syria, along with six or seven other people, and had made himself noticed with the Belgian anti-terrorist services.

Samy Amimour [9.1][9.2]

• Samy Amimour, born on October 15, 1987 in Paris and died on November 13, 2015 in Paris, is a French Islamist terrorist of Kabyle origin.
• This former RATP bus driver joined the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria in 2013. Returning to France, he became one of three authors, along with Ismael Omar Mostefaï and Foued Mohamed-Aggad, of the killing of the Bataclan who caused the death of 90 people during the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris.
• Samy Amimour grew up in the city of La Boule in Drancy in Seine-Saint-Denis in a Muslim family described as “very westernized”. His two parents are of Algerian origin.
• Starting in the summer of 2012, Samy Amimour began adopting the dress of Salafist Muslims.
• On October 15, he was auditioned with two other people by the Directorate General of Homeland Security, Samir Bouabout and Charaffe al Mouadan, who will be targeted and eliminated by an American drone in Raqqa on December 24, 2015.
• The trio is suspected of wanting to return to Yemen or Afghanistan to do jihad. Amimour and al Mouadan took shooting lessons at the National Police Shooting Association, in the 18th district of Paris.
• Amimour is released quickly but is placed under judicial control. He meets this same year on the internet his future wife Kahina, who will join him later in Syria where they will get married.
• In September 2013, the former RATP bus driver joined the ranks of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria via Turkey. The Turkish secret services locate him on September 6, 2013 in the company of Ismael Omar Mostefaï who is one of the three terrorists of Bataclan and Samir Bouabout, with whom he had prepared a departure for the failed jihad in 2012. From there, he crosses the border with Syria and joins the ranks of Daesh. His future wife joins him and they get married. They settle in Raqqa, the center of the Islamic State in Syria. He takes the nickname of Abu Hajia. An international arrest warrant has been issued against him by France. He is injured in the leg by a shell in early 2014. His father visits him briefly on June 29, 2014 in Syria, with the hope of leaving the ranks of IS, but without success. The couple then joins Mosul in Iraq.
• Samy Amimour manages to return to France without being spotted by the authorities.

Omar Ismaïl Mostefaï [10.1][10.2][10.3][10.4][10.5][10.6][10.7]

• Ismaël Omar Mostefaï was born in 1985 in Courcouronnes to an Algerian father and a Portuguese mother converted to Islam.
• Around 2005, he moved with his family to Chartres in the district of La Madeleine. He remains there until 2012.
• Ismaël Omar Mostefaï is sentenced eight times between 2004 and 2010 for acts of petty crime. He is not incarcerated, however. He works between 2008 and 2010 in an industrial bakery in Créteil in Val-de-Marne.
• He married in 2008 a cousin, from a village near Oran. Together, they have two children, in June 2010 and August 2013, a few weeks before leaving for Syria.
• Between 2007 and 2010, Mostefaï is part of the movement Tabligh, a militant Islamist movement and frequent the mosque of the movement in Lucé.
• He left suddenly this group in 2010. He then frequented the great Mosque of Chartres until 2012.
• It is also in 2010 that he is reported for its radicalization and is the subject of a card “S”. He was spotted in the company of Abdelilah Ziyad, a Moroccan Imam sentenced to eight years in prison in France for his participation in the preparation of the 1994 bombing at the Asni hotel in Marrakech which killed two people. He was sentenced to 8 years and released in 2001. In 2015, he preaches in a small mosque in Troyes (Al ghazzaly Mosque), under a false identity. He was the alleged mentor of Omar Mostefai.
• The Turkish secret service spot Ismaël Omar Mostefai on September 6, 2013 on Turkish territory with Samy Amimour, with whom he will commit the massacre of the Bataclan in 2015 and one of his friends. According to a Turkish government official, Turkey has reported Ismael Omar Mostefaï twice, in December 2014 and June 2015, to the French authorities without receiving any response in return. His “S” card is renewed in October 2015.
• In a video of the IS filmed before the attacks and released on January 24, 2016, he appears in a lattice, threatening and then decapitating a man with a knife.

Foued Mohamed-Aggad [11.1][11.2]

• Foued Mohamed-Aggad was born on September 18, 1992. Of Algerian origin by his father and Moroccan by his mother, he grew up in Steinseltz, small village of the vineyard north-Alsatian, before returning to Wissembourg, where he attended the college and high school. He also spent time at Emile-Mathis High School in Schiltigheim.
• From 2013, with his brother Karim and his friends in Zurich Radouane Taher and Mustafa Savas, he joined a group of young people from Strasbourg, mostly from the district of Meinau. The band is radicalized in a few months, especially with the Palestinian imam Mohamed al-Ashram, aka Abu Mansour, who officiates at the mosque in the district of Cronenbourg before being driven out by the faithful. The group has its habits in a shisha bar Kehl, where he matures his project of departure in Syria. Some rub shoulders with Mourad Farès, alias Abou Hassan or Mourad al-Faransi, one of the leading recruiters of French jihadists – he has since been arrested in Turkey, indicted and incarcerated.
• Imam Mohammed Al Ashram, from Palestinian territories (Gaza Strip). He is suspected of being a Salafist imam, an accusation that the man defends himself.
• The departures for Syria are in small groups in December 2013. Foued Mohamed-Aggad flies on December 17 from Frankfurt, Germany, for Antalya, Turkey.
• Foued Mohamed-Aggad returned to France clandestinely only to commit the attack of Bataclan.
• He slipped into the flow of migrants: he and the other two terrorists were greeted on September 17, 2015 in Hungary by Salah Abdeslam.

Bastille Day Attack, Nice

The Attack

• On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-ton cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and the injury of 458 others. The driver was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France. The attack ended following an exchange of gunfire, in which Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot and killed by police.
• ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Lahouaiej-Bouhlel answered “calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State”. On July 15, Francois Molins, the prosecutor for the Public Ministry, which is overseeing the investigation, said the attack bore the hallmarks of jihadist terrorism.

The Attacker [1]

Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel

• French police identified the perpetrator as Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old man of Tunisian nationality, born in Tunisia, with a French residency permit and a living in Nice. His parents live in Tunisia and rarely heard from him when he moved to France in 2005. His father said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel underwent psychiatric treatment before he moved to France. He married a French-Tunisian cousin, living in Nice, with whom he had three children. According to his wife’s lawyer, he has been reported for domestic violence and they separated.
• After this separation, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a wild life according to the prosecutor and had had sexual relations with both men and women according to an unnamed source. He was known to the police for five prior criminal offenses; particularly for threatening behavior, violence, and petty theft. Neighbors reported that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel rarely spoke to them.
• François Molins, the Prosecutor Leading the Inquiry into the Possible Involvement of Organized Islamist terrorism, announced on 18 July that information has been suggested that, except for a short period of time leading up to the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was “a young man completely uninvolved in religious issues and not a practice Muslim, who ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sex life.” Lahouaiej-Bouhlel feels small in Tunisia, according to his brother. However, days before the attack, a surprising move, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel persuaded some friends to smuggle bundles of cash worth 100,000 euros illegally to his family.
• The investigation suggests that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel became radicalised shortly before the attack. Prosecutor Molins said that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a “clear, recent interest in the radical jihadist movement.” Newspapers reported, on the authority of investigators, that evidence found on Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s cellphone showed he may have been in contact with individuals in his neighborhood who have been known to the French intelligence agencies as Islamic radicals. However, an intelligence source cautioned that this “may be coincidental, given the neighborhood where he lived.” “Everyone knows everyone there.” He is known to have known Omar Diaby, “known local Islamist believed to be related to Al Nusra.
• One neighbor of his estranged wife said that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was attending a mosque in April 2016. A few months before the attack, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had shown friends in ISIL, and said, “I’m used to seeing that”. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s computer contained photos of ISIL fighters and ISIL beheadings, of dead bodies, of Osama bin Laden, Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the Islamic State flag, a cover of Charlie Hebdo, and images linked to radical Islamism.

Possible accomplishments [2.1][2.2][2.3][2.4][2.5]

Aleksander Hasalla

Hasalla a 38-year-old, he is suspected of providing weapons to the killer. He is arrested on December 17, 2016. He committed suicide at the Fleury – Mérogis remand prison on June 8, 2018, three days after his remand was extended, a few days before the terrorism charges were filed against him.

Mohamed Oualid Ghraieb

Ghraieb is a 40-year-old Tunisian working in a hotel in Nice. He says he has known the terrorist for fifteen years. He met Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in a boxing club in Tunisia and then found him in a gym Nice. The exploitation of his computer nevertheless shows that he had carried out research on Syria, the allies of Daech and Charlie Hebdo. Faced once again with the details of his telephony, Mohamed Oualid Ghraieb simply agrees to admit that he knows another of the indictment of the case – Chokri Chafroud.

Chokri Chafroud

Chafroud is “the other mind of the massacre” of Nice. Tunisian 37 years old, who lives in Nice. The French investigators have found traces of his DNA in the back of the truck that killed 84 people. In short, he not only advised his friend on all the details of the action and had several phone calls on the day of the massacre, but was by his side as he prepared. This SMS was sent by Chafroud to Bouhlel, on April 4, 2016 which resonates particularly today: “Load the truck of 2000 tons of iron and nique, cut him the brakes my friend, and me I look”.

Hamdi Zagar

Zagar was arrested July 25, 2016 and appears in photo in front of the truck, on July 12. The 37-year-old man sports a PSG jersey and poses next to the terrorist who displays a broad smile. “Mohamed did not say anything particular. He looked happy to have a new truck, he smiled”, he tells the investigators. A single divorcee and father of three, he also says he does not know Bouhlel well. His brother, however, married the sister of the terrorist in 2012. The investigators quickly remind him of the reality: “You mentioned about 10 telephone contacts in 2016. The study of your detailed billing shows 207 occurrences between your line and that of Mohamed, between August 29, 2015 and July 15, 2016?” He is indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on 1 August 2016 for criminal conspiracy in relation to a criminal terrorist enterprise. He is suspected of having prepared for a second attack in Nice for August 15, 2016.

Razzie A./Ramzi Arefa

A 22-year-old from Nice, is suspected of having provided the 7.65mm automatic assault rifle to the killer. He admits to know Lahouiaej Bouhlel that he helped to obtain his pistol by putting him in contact with a knowledge of prison, Artan Henaj, a 38-year-old Albanian trafficker. Cost of the transaction: 1200 euros. A Kalashnikov will also be provided, but not paid. Henaj’s companion, a 40-year-old Franco-Albanian, Enkelejda Zace, who attended the transaction, also ends up in a cell.

Summary and questions:

Following this report and the Jean-Charles Brisard’s report that was published in November 2016 by the American journal Sentinel regarding Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan attacks, we are suggesting to raise some questions to the French authorities.

The Toulouse Attack

According to our understanding Mohammed Merah was recruited by his brother and his entourage. He strengthened himself religiously and radicalized at the Mirail Mosque in Toulouse and the radical Imam Mamadou Daffé. We understand that his travels to the Middle-east have reinforced his radicalization and his last trip to Pakistan and meeting with the Taliban led him to the decision to carry out the attack.

1. Who financed the Mirail mosque in 2010? Who financed Mamadou Daffé? Who were the donors of this mosque?
2. Where were the arms bought, by whom, from whom, how?
3. How was Taliban involved in the attack? Spiritually, by orders, by financing, by giving the arms?

Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher

According to our understanding the Kouachi brothers were recruited in 2003 at the Adda’wa Mosque (19th district of Paris) by Farid Benyettou (the Buttes-Chaumont network) and the Imam Larbi Kechat. Cherif Kouachi joined to the team Amedy Coulibaly, which he met at Fleury Merogis prison in 2005. They became radicalized by Djamel Beghal as their mentor. Upon leaving prison, Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly visited Djamel Beghal in 2010. The Kouachi brothers became radicalized in 2011 with Al Qaida in Yemen.

1. Who funded the Adda’wa Mosque in 2003?
2. Who is Djamel Beghal and is he still a mentor in Algeria?
3. Was Amedy Coulibaly in Yemen with the Kouachi brothers? If not, between 2010 and 2015 was he somewhere in the Middle East?
4. Was there external funding for Muslim prisoners in Fleury-Merogis prison between 2005 and 2010?
5. Who was the dominant person in the Fleury-Merogis prison who managed the Muslim prisoners?
6. Who financed the attacks, buying arms, renting the facilities? Although they seem to pay themselves, did they receive money from external sources?
7. They seem to have a bank account. The KYC seems to be sloppy. Who did the KYC? Is there more info in the bank, which may reflect the source of money?
8. Regarding the facilities they used, is there more info they left which may reflect on the possible sponsor?
9. Was there a direct or indirect involvement of AQ in the attacks?

Bataclan

According to our understanding the two organizers of the attacks served time together at the Nivelles prison in Belgium in 2010. They were probably recruited in prison or beforehand. It seems that the attack was initiated in Syria (with the radicalization there of Abdelhamid Abaaoud). We understand that Omar Ismaïl Mostefaï and Foued Mohamed-Aggad were in several mosques in France, where they were probably recruited and radicalized. It seems that the attack teams have been divided according to their acquaintance: the terrorists of Bataclan were in Syria in 2013; Saint Denis Stadium terrorists, the two foreigners and a Frenchman, met in Syria in 2015 together with the terrorists who fired on the terraces.

1. In which mosques were: Bilal Hadfi, Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Chakib Akrouh and Samy Amimour before they left for the Middle East?
2. Who was the dominant Islamist mentor at Nivelles prison in 2010?
3. Who sponsored the mentor, the radical Islamic activity in the jail at that time?
4. Who sponsored the travel of the French/Belgian terrorists to the Middle-East?
5. What do we know about the financing of the following mosques: Lucé Mosque, Great Mosque of Chartres, Al Ghazzaly Mosque in Troyes, Kleper Street Mosque in Cronenbourg, Elsau Mosque?
6. Do we know from whom and how Mohamed Belkaid received the funding for the attacks?
7. Do we know to whom and how Mohamed Belkaid sent the funds?

Nice Attack

According to our understanding, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was recruited to carry out the attack because of his poor mental state. The recruiters are not clear, although we can see him surrounded by several.

1. Which mosque did he visit before the attack?
2. Who was financing of this mosque?
3. Who is the main character who recruited him to radical activity?
4. How was his truck sponsored?

Conclusion:

1. According to the information we have, most of the French terrorists visited mosques just before leaving for the Middle East and became radical there. It is well known that specific mosques and imams are involved in that. We suspect that foreign international Islamic entities are involved in financing these elements – Qatar and Qaradawi, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood through local entities.

2. Prisons are significant from the point of view of connections to radical Islam and the radicalization itself. There are imams and mentors who either stay in the prison or visit from outside. Their financing should be look at too.

3. The activity of these radical Islamists from the Middle East, Pakistan and Yemen (Muslim conflict zones) led them to a unity and to carry out the attacks. Who sponsors these travels? What is the method? Contact to the attackers?

4. Apart from the Nice attack, it seems that the other three attacks were inspired and influenced by terrorist organizations (Taliban, Al Qaida, ISIS). It seems that each one of these organisations wanted to show more power than the other. What was there actual involvement in the attacks?

5. The financing of the attacks can be divided into two parts:

a. Funding that includes the recruitment of terrorists, and their travel to Muslim conflict areas. This funding seems to be made from mosques under the control of international Islamic entities such as Qatar or Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, and MB international entities.

b. The financing of the attacks themselves happened either directly or indirectly by the terrorist organizations themselves.

6. This status brings us to the question, whether, the financial info which may exists in the hands of the local authorities can be inspected also by our knowledge and experience.

7. This information may assist all in the future for better prevention.