Tag Archives: Paris Attacks

Security fears overshadow world’s biggest travel fair

BERLIN (Reuters) – Security fears are on everybody’s lips at the ITB travel trade fair in Berlin this year as a battered tourist industry seeks to reassure travelers and tour operators that they need not shy away from booking summer holidays for this year.

Attacks in tourist hotspots like a Tunisian beach resort and the city of Paris over the past year have rattled travelers’ confidence, sending bookings for Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt plummeting and heralding a slowdown in demand for international travel.

“People have money to spend, but there’s a strong negative impact from the geopolitical situation. People fear attacks,” Roy Scheerder, commercial director at low cost Dutch airline Transavia, told Reuters at ITB.

Airlines, tour operators, hoteliers and travel search companies at the fair said they had seen more caution than usual in bookings at the start of the year, often a popular time for people to book trips.

A survey by consultancy IPK International projected that growth in the number of international trips taken would slow to 3 percent this year, down from 4.6 percent in 2015.

Rolf Freitag, founder of IPK, said security fears had knocked off about 1.5 percentage points from the expected growth this year. Of 50,000 people in 42 countries surveyed at the start of February, 15 percent said they would either not travel or holiday in their home country this year.

Hotel groups like Marriott International and Best Western expressed concern over tourist bookings for Paris after November’s attacks on the French capital, which may have a knock-on effect on other destinations.

“It has a ripple effect. If you think about someone traveling from the United States to Paris, Paris was not the only city they would visit, they would also go to other parts of France or Europe, and that has been curtailed,” Best Western CEO David Kong told Reuters.

The beneficiaries are destinations perceived to carry a smaller risk of becoming the target of attacks.

“The really hot markets are anywhere that’s safe. Spain is on fire for this summer. Italy is very strong,” Darren Huston, chief executive of Priceline Group and its subsidiary Booking.com, told Reuters.

Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling, for instance, has added more capacity to Spanish destinations from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland to keep up with demand, though it highlighted that hotel space was running out.

Destinations in North America and the Caribbean are seeing increased demand, while search firm Kayak said Germans were more interested in hotels in their own country this year.

Some in the industry are clinging to hope that tourists will still travel this summer but are holding off on firm bookings longer than usual due to the uncertain security outlook.

“Past experience has shown us that a country that is serious about tourism and has built an infrastructure always bounces back,” Taleb Rifai, the head of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), told Reuters in an interview.

“Look at Egypt. It has been up and down for the last 10 years. Every time it comes back stronger than before,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Peter Maushagen and Tina Bellon; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Paris attack survivors seek solace with Bataclan security man who saved their lives

PARIS (Reuters) – Thirty-five-year-old Didi saved scores of lives on Nov. 13 when Islamic State militants attacked the Bataclan concert hall where he was in charge of security. Now those he saved say they turn to him for solace.

They meet, mostly in cafes, just to be together, to chat and support each other.

“It was just surreal to see him show such composure, and be methodical and efficient, and also so human … we lapped up everything he said, he was our point of reference,” says Myriam, a survivor who regularly meets up with him.

And while Didi, an Algerian who asked not to give his full name, says he is no hero, Myriam said meeting him is helping her move on.

Like other survivors of the attacks, in which 90 were killed, she sought him out for weeks to say “Thank you.”

“It was very important, it was key for me to feel better and move on with life. Being able to say thank you to someone about that night was something really good. To be able to hold someone in my arms and just tell him ‘you saved my life’,” said the single mother of a 10-month-old baby.

Didi, who has not been back to work since the attacks, is constantly on the phone with survivors.

“Without him, I would not be here. He was the one who told me ‘go there, get out this way, be careful’,” said Franck Auffret, who along with other survivors created the victims’ association “Life for Paris”.

“Someone tried to shoot me when I was in the street, and Didi told me to take shelter. Otherwise I would have stayed in the middle of the street and I would have been shot,” he said as he met with Didi and another survivor in a Paris cafe this week.

Survivors have launched petitions asking the government to reward the security manager for his acts, and sources at the foreign affairs ministry said they were discussing awarding Didi the Legion of Honour award.

Didi explained that like everyone else, he laid down on the floor, turned off his walkie-talkie and then took advantage of a moment when the attackers were reloading their weapons to tell people to head for the emergency exits.

While shots rang out, dozens of people packed into the emergency exit, which led to a small alleyway behind the venue. Didi opened the doors and guided concert-goers to a student residence down the street.

“Helping others and seeing them make progress in their healing process is the thing that’s going to help me get better and heal,” he told Reuters.

(Reporting by Pauline Mevel; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Louise Ireland)

French PM defends emergency rule, says terror threat ‘here to last’

PARIS (Reuters) – Thousands of house searches since November’s Islamist attacks in Paris have helped foil another terrorist plot, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday as his government sought to extend emergency rule.

Valls, defending state of emergency rules that have allowed police conduct thousands of house searches in just a few months, also said over 2,000 French residents were believed to be involved with jihadi networks based in Syria and Iraq.

The Islamic State militant group that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility for the Nov 13. attack on Paris, in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.

“The terrorist threat is here, and here to last,” Valls told the National Assembly, where the government is asking lawmakers to extend the state of emergency to the end of May and amend the Constitution so people convicted on terror charges can be stripped of their citizenship.

In 2015, 15 terror plots were foiled by the French security services, he said.

At least one plot, he said, was foiled as a direct result of house searches police have been able to conduct under state of emergency rule, which allows police to conduct raids without first securing a search warrant from the judiciary.

In the three months since the attacks on Paris, police have carried out 3,289 house searches, placed 341 people in custody, put 407 under house arrest and confiscated 560 weapons, 42 of them war-grade, the prime minister said.

Half of the 2,000 people involved in some way or other with jihadist networks in Syria and Iraq had left France for that region, and 597 were still there, he said.

France is among several countries whose jets are bombing the strongholds of the Islamist State, which has declared a caliphate and vowed to carry out more attacks on France.

The ruling Socialists have taken a strong line on law and order against competition from their conservative opponents and the far-right National Front as the country approaches elections next year.

The plan to strip dual nationals of their French passport if convicted of terrorism has sparked huge controversy, deeply divided Hollande’s Socialist party and threatens to hurt his already faltering chances of winning re-election next year.

After many redraftings of the text, it is unclear if the government will manage to muster enough voted from left-wing and right-wing lawmakers to have it adopted.

(Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus and Tom Heneghan)

Islamic State possibly planning more attacks in Europe, Europol warns

The Islamic State is believed to be planning additional terrorist attacks against targets in France and the European Union, according to a new report from the union’s law enforcement agency.

Europol issued a public report on the Islamic State on Monday, writing “there is every reason to expect” the organization, or those inspired by it, would carry out another attack. The agency also wrote there’s a chance of attacks from lone-actor terrorists, or other religiously inspired groups.

The report, which does not mention a specific future terrorist threat, draws its conclusions from a meeting of more than 50 counterterrorism officials from throughout the European Union. The discussions were held November 30 and December 1, a little more than two weeks after the Islamic State killed 130 people during Nov. 13 terrorist attacks at various locations across Paris.

The report highlights what Europol believes is an adjustment in the Islamic State’s game plan.

It indicates the Paris attacks, as well as the investigation into them, “appear to indicate a shift towards a broader strategy of (the Islamic State) going global,” and evidence suggests the group is planning “special forces style attacks” in foreign countries. It warns of the possibility of additional attacks against France, or other European Union nations, “in the near future.”

It was released the same day that Europol opened its European Counter Terrorism Centre in The Hague, Netherlands. In a news release announcing the opening, Europol said the continent “is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over 10 years,” and the center would help officials share terrorism intelligence and coordinate responses to any potential acts of violence.

The report offers insight into Europol’s intelligence on the Islamic State’s recruitment, training, financing and planning methods.

It addresses public fears that terrorists are exploiting the ongoing migrant crisis to enter Europe, in some cases posing as refugees to get into the union undetected. The report says there is “no concrete evidence” that terrorists are systematically using the refugee system that way, though acknowledged it’s possible some Syrian refugees “may be vulnerable” to radicalization.

The report also outlines how quickly the Islamic State can recruit foreigners — particularly younger people, who can be more impressionable and vulnerable. It indicates 20 percent or more of the Islamic State’s foreign fighters had been diagnosed with a mental problem before joining the group, and up to 80 percent of the foreign fighters had some kind of criminal record.

Europol’s report indicated that attacks aren’t necessarily coordinated from Syria, an Islamic State stronghold, and that the leaders of local cells are given “tactical freedom” to make adjustments as they see fit. It notes the Islamic State’s documented ability to “strike at will,” but noted the group has a preference for attacking soft targets — those unable to defend themselves — to kill as many people as possible.

The report noted similarities between the Paris attacks and attacks against Mumbai in 2008, as both had comparable targets, weapons and death tolls.

Europol says cyber attacks or plots against power grids or similar targets “is currently not a priority” for the Islamic State, though the report indicates it’s possible the organization could pursue “cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructures and state security” against Western nations in the future.

Belgium charges suspect allegedly tied to Paris attacks, releases another

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium charged a man detained this week with terrorist offenses linked to the Paris attacks and released another held for three weeks due to lack of evidence, federal prosecutors said on Friday.

A judge determined that Zakaria J., born in 1986 and detained on Wednesday, should be kept in custody for a further week on charges of terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.

A second man detained this week, Mustafa E., was released.

A Belgian court also ordered on Friday the release from custody of one of 10 people previously charged with involvement in the Paris attacks due to insufficient evidence against him.

Ayoub Bazarouj, 22, was detained after a search of his house on Dec. 30 and charged the next day with terrorist murder and participation in a terrorist organization. Bazarouj’s lawyer Yannick De Vlaemynck said he had been freed without conditions.

Many of those being held in Belgium are charged with having aided Salah Abdeslam, a former Brussels resident who was in Paris on the night of the Nov. 13 attacks in which 130 people were killed.

“He knew of Salah Abdeslam as he lived in the area, but he was not a friend and there are no elements showing that he provided help in any way,” De Vlaemynck said.

Belgium has been at the heart of investigations into the attacks as four of the Paris suicide bombers had either been living in Belgium or were Belgian-Moroccans. Belgian investigators are also looking for two fugitives, notably Abdeslam, whose brother was one of the suicide attackers.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Belgium detains two more suspects over Paris attacks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium has arrested two more men suspected of links to the Paris attacks on Nov. 13 in which 130 people were killed, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

The men, identified as Belgian national Zakaria J., born in 1986 and Moroccan national Mustafa E., born in 1981, were arrested during two house searches on Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, prosecutors said.

“Both were arrested due to their possible ties with different suspects in this case,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “The Investigating Judge will decide later today upon their possible further detention.”

No arms or explosives were found during the searches, it added.

Since the November Paris attacks federal prosecutors have already taken 10 people into custody over their suspected involvement, which appear to have been prepared mainly in Belgium.

If the two latest detainees are kept in custody, their number would rise to 12.

Last week, investigators said a number of the Paris attackers used two apartments and a house in Belgium as possible safe houses in the weeks leading up to their coordinated shooting and suicide bomb assault on the French capital.

They also found a possible bomb factory for the Paris attacks in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, with traces of explosives.

(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Dominic Evans)

Morocco arrests Belgian national allegedly tied to Paris attackers

RABAT (Reuters) – Moroccan authorities have arrested a Belgian national of local origin directly linked to the attackers who carried out the Paris shootings and bombings in November that killed 130 people, the government said in a statement on Monday.

The interior ministry gave only the suspect’s initials in Arabic and said he fought in Syria with al-Nusra front before joining the Islamic State.

The suspect, whose initials could be translated to J.A. or G.A., was arrested on Jan. 15 in the city of Mohammedia, the statement added. “He went to Syria with one of the suicide bombers of Saint Denis,” it said.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant who authorities said was the ringleader of the Paris attacks, was killed with other suspects days after when police raided a house in the Saint Denis suburb.

Investigations showed that during his stay in Syria he has built solid ties with Islamic State leaders including the ringleader of the Paris attacks.

The suspect was trained to handle different weapons and guerrilla tactics but left Syria through Turkey, Germany, Belgium then Netherlands from where he came to Morocco.

Morocco provided the tip-off that enabled French police to locate Abaaoud, has been holding Abaaoud’s brother Yassine since October and has issued an arrest warrant for Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks and is on the run.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Patrick Markey/Jeremy Gaunt)

Europe turns to Morocco in Paris attacks investigation

AIT OURIR, Morocco (Reuters) – A few weeks before she was killed in a raid by French special forces beside the suspected ringleader of last November’s Paris attacks, Hasna Ait Boulahcen packed her bags and said her last farewells to relatives in Morocco.

The 26-year-old Parisian’s almost two-month-long trip to her father’s home town of Ait Ourir proved to be one of the last stops on her journey from fun-loving party girl to devout Muslim – and possibly Islamist militant.

Conversations with relatives and family friends shed light not only on her transformation but also on the role of Moroccan intelligence in helping services in France and Belgium trying to counter the threats of Islamist militant attacks.

Ait Boulahcen’s stay in Ait Ourir from early August until late September is now part of the investigation into the attacks which killed 130 people and were claimed by Islamic State, and has increasingly drawn in Morocco’s intelligence services.

On Nov. 18, five days after the Paris attacks, she and her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud were killed in a barrage of bullets when special services opened fire on the apartment she had led him to in the French capital, possibly as a hideout.

Morocco provided the tip-off that enabled French police to locate Abaaoud, has been holding Abaaoud’s brother Yassine since October and has issued an arrest warrant for Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks and is on the run.

A week after the attacks, French President Francois Hollande received King Mohammed of Morocco in Paris to thank him for Rabat’s “efficient help”.

On Nov. 23, after it became clear some of the attackers had planned the attacks from Brussels and were of Moroccan origin, Rabat said Belgium’s King Philippe had also called King Mohammed to enlist the help of the North African country’s intelligence.

“We are exchanging information with them on a very professional and very good level,” said Alain Winants, who was head of Belgium’s intelligence service from 2006 to 2014 and is now Advocate General at Belgium’s Supreme Court.

Security has been tightened in Ait Ourir, a dusty potato-growing town in central Morocco where Ait Boulahcen’s father Mohammad has a modest concrete home. Relatives and neighbors told Reuters they had been questioned by police, who kept a close watch on the town from cars parked on many street corners.

The Moroccan authorities have not said what their inquiries have thrown up but a relative in Ait Ourir told Reuters that Ait Boulahcen was accompanied by one of her brothers when she arrived in early August and the other brother joined them later.

She was stopped at the airport when she flew in, one of her uncles said, but was allowed to enter the country when her father and an uncle gave the authorities their addresses.

It was not clear why she was stopped or whether she was on any security watch list. Police did not comment.

BIG CHANGE

Ait Boulahcen, her brothers and a sister were born in France to their father’s second Moroccan wife after his first marriage, which produced two daughters and a son, broke down. He returned to Morocco from France when his second marriage also collapsed.

Relatives and neighbors saw a huge change in Ait Boulahcen this summer. She had ditched the modern clothes she wore during her first visit to see her father in 2013 and now had on the full face veil favored by more conservative Muslim women.

“We had problems with her when she came the first time because she used to smoke and drink, and in our town it is shameful for a girl to act like that. She was so happy when she said she’d changed and was a good Muslim now,” an uncle said.

“She said she wanted to come back and get Moroccan identity papers and a passport,” he said, without making clear how far she had got.

He and other family members said they believed Abaaoud had exploited his cousin’s naiveté and led her astray. How close they were is unclear but Ait Boulahcen’s half-sister, Nezha, said they had not discussed Abaaoud during her stay.

Aitboulahcen unwittingly led police to Abaaoud by speaking to him on her mobile phone, which was tapped as part of a drugs investigation. Police then saw her meet Abaaoud and lead him to the apartment where they and a third suspect were killed.

French police located Abaaoud after they received a tip-off from Morocco that he may still be in France and honed in on Aitboulahcen. Until then they thought he had fled the country.

It is not clear why Abaaoud’s younger brother Yassine has been held since landing in Morocco in October. Their father, Omar Abaaoud, declined comment.

LONG HISTORY OF COOPERATION

European intelligence has cooperated with Rabat since guest workers from Morocco began arriving in the 1960s because monitoring them was impossible without knowledge of their culture and languages, Moroccan Darija and Amazigh, experts say.

Morocco has stepped up its tracking of militant cells since Islamist attackers killed 17 people in Marrakesh in 2011.

“Morocco has shown itself to be extremely reactive in passing on crucial information that has prevented terrorist attacks and whose value has been appreciated by countries targeted, ranging from France to Spain and the United States,” said Moroccan scholar El Mostafa Rezrazi, author of a book on security cooperation between Morocco and Europe.

A Moroccan security source said the foreign intelligence service DGED (Direction générale des études et de la documentation) has “operations” in Belgium but did not confirm estimates by experts that it has about 150 “contacts” there.

Cooperation almost broke down in 2008 when Belgium asked the DGED to pull out three officers who had not kept it informed about their actions, and Rabat pulled out all of its agents.

“That didn’t last long because, with 600,000 Moroccans in Belgium, neither the Moroccan service nor the Belgian service could stay in a situation where there was no contact,” said Winants, the former Belgian intelligence chief. “I went very rapidly to see my counterparts in Morocco and we started again on a new basis.”

CRITICISM BY RIGHTS GROUPS

Cooperation between France and Morocco also dates back many years although relations were strained in 2014 when French authorities sought to question Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of Morocco’s domestic intelligence, over torture allegations.

This led to Morocco suspending cooperation agreements with France, despite concerns in Paris that Moroccans and French of Moroccan origin were heading to Syria to train as jihadists.

The two countries resumed cooperation in January 2015, after Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Moroccan officials estimate that 2,000 Moroccan fighters have joined armed groups in Syria and Iraq, including Islamic State and the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, and about 200 have been jailed on their return home.

But Morocco’s experience of battling militancy dates back at least to the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war, when hundreds of Moroccans went to Afghanistan to fight Soviet forces.

A number of militants from Morocco or of Moroccan origin were arrested over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and were linked to other attacks such as suicide bombings that killed 33 people and 12 attackers in Casablanca in 2003 and the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

The DGST domestic intelligence (Direction générale de la surveillance du territoire) has been accused by Moroccan and international human rights organizations of torturing suspects, including on behalf of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during President George W. Bush’s “war on terror”.

Morocco has denied the charges.

(Philip Blenkinsop reported from Brussels, Additional reporting by Morade Azzouz, Marie-Louise Gumuchian and John Irish in Paris, and by Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam, Writing by Patrick Markey and Timothy Heritage, Editing by Janet McBride)

Belgium identifies three Paris attack plot safe houses

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A number of the Paris attackers used two apartments and a house in Belgium as possible safe houses in the weeks in leading up to their coordinated shooting and suicide bomb assault on the French capital, investigators said on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors said in a statement, summarizing some of their findings, that the Paris attack plotters had rented an apartment in Brussels and another in the city of Charleroi at the start of September.

They had also rented a house in the town of Auvelais, some 35 miles south of Brussels, at the start of October. All three were rented for a year, and paid in cash. The tenants gave false identities.

Investigators found DNA traces of one of the attackers, Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up in Paris on Nov. 13, the prosecutors said.

In the Charleroi apartment they found mattresses and fingerprints of both Hadfi and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and was believed to be one of the plot leaders. He was killed after a siege in St Denis, near Paris, on Nov. 18.

The house in Auvelais contained several mattresses.

Investigators have also established that the Seat Leon hatchback used in the Paris attacks stopped near the suspected safe houses in Charleroi and Auvelais. Another vehicle, a BMW rented by a suspect, stopped near all three locations.

Prosecutors said last week that they had found a possible Paris attacks bomb factory in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, with traces of explosives and handmade belts.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Belgium says found possible Paris attacks bomb factory in December raid

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian investigators believe explosives used in the attacks in Paris in November may have been made in an apartment in Brussels that was rented under a false name and where a fingerprint of a key fugitive was found.

Police found material that could be used to make explosives, traces of explosive acetone peroxide and handmade belts during a raid on the apartment on Dec. 10, federal prosecutors said in a statement on Friday.

Belgian newspaper De Standaard, which reported the raid in its Friday edition, said the investigators believed the explosives were probably packed into suicide belts in a hotel outside Paris in the lead-up to the Nov. 13 attacks.

Prosecutors investigating Belgian links to the Paris attacks said the apartment in the district of Schaerbeek had been rented under a false name that might have been used by a person already in custody in connection with the Paris attacks.

The find adds to indications that the Nov. 13 shooting and suicide bomb attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed, were at least partially planned in Belgium.

Two of the attackers had been living in Brussels and Belgian authorities have arrested 10 people.

Investigators also found a fingerprint of Salah Abdeslam, the brother of one of the attackers, who returned from Paris the morning after the attacks and has still not been found.

Many of those arrested in Belgium have links to Abdeslam, including two who drove from Brussels hours after the attacks to pick him up and another who drove him from one part of Brussels to Schaerbeek after his return.

According to De Standaard, investigators believe the fingerprint indicates Abdeslam used the flat as a safe house after the attacks, given signs that the apartment had been partially cleaned up, although they do not know how long he stayed there.

Belgian media also said this week investigators also now believe that two men controlled the Nov. 13 attacks by sending SMS text messages from Belgium during the evening.

Prosecutors appealed to the public for help on Dec. 4 in the hunt for these two men who traveled with Abdeslam to Hungary in September using fake identity cards with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal. Grainy images of their faces are shown on the federal police’s website.

The two, clearly older than the attackers, are believe to have played a pivotal role, according to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, in assuring logistics for the operation that was months in the planning.

The same false identity of Soufiane Kayal was used to rent a property in the Belgian town of Auvelais that possibly served as a safe house.

The other false identity card, for Samir Bouzid, was used four days after the attacks to transfer 750 euros at a Western Union office in Brussels to Hasna Aitboulahcen, who died in a police assault in St Denis on Nov. 18.

Separately, federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw warned in an interview on broadcaster VTM late on Thursday that the Jan. 15 anniversary of a foiled attack on Belgian soil could prompt someone to launch an attack in the country.

“We know that they opt for symbolic dates although on the other hand no one knows why Charlie Hebdo took place on Jan. 7,” he said.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Toby Chopra)