The men who attacked Paris: profile of a terror cell

The killers who struck at locations across the French capital on Friday night, murdering at least 129 people and injuring hundreds more
The Paris public prosecutor, François Molins, said on Saturday the attackers had divided themselves into three coordinated teams to hit at least six locations across Paris. 




Two suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts after attacking concert-goers at the Bataclan theatre, where another terrorist was shot dead by security forces. Three more terrorists blew themselves up outside the Stade de France as an international football match took place inside. The seventh known attacker to die blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe, one of a series of eating establishments attacked in quick succession.
French officials have named Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, a wanted extremist also known as Abu Umar Al-Baljiki, as the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks. Abu Oud, 27, a Belgian of Moroccan origin who grew up in a middle class family in Molenbeek, is said to have been instrumental in organising and executing the atrocity. He travelled to Syria to join Isis in 2014, where he is currently understood to be. The Isis propaganda magazine Dabiq claimed he returned to Belgium to set up a safe house with weapons in Verviers but was out of the country when it was raided in January and his two fellow jihadists were killed in a shootout. Abu Oud was also linked by French officials to the thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train in August and a foiled plot to attack a church in Paris in April.
Concert venue attacked at 21.50
At least 87 people died after terrorists fired indiscriminately into the audience. Two attackers blew themselves up and a third was shot dead when security forces stormed the venue around midnight.
Samy Amimour, 28
Born in Drancy, a north-eastern suburb of Paris, to Algerian parents and worked for 15 months as a bus driver before being sacked in 2012. Appears to have been radicalised at a mosque in Blanc-Mesnil. Detained in October 2012 on suspicion of “associating with terrorists” and planning to leave for Yemen and held for four days. He went to Syria in September 2013, violating his parole. He rejected his father’s attempts to persuade him to come back but returned to France in mid-October, telling his parents he had married a Frenchwoman and they were expecting a child.
Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29 
Mostefai was the first suicide attacker named by French authorities, identified by prints taken from a severed finger. He was of Algerian heritage and grew up in Courcouronnes, just south of Paris, and married with a five-year-old son. Police had a radicalisation file on him from 2010 but he was never implicated in any terrorist organisation. May have been radicalised in a mosque in nearby town of Lucé. Went to Syria between autumn of 2013 and spring 2014, after which he returned to France. A Turkish official has told the Guardian that Turkey twice tipped off French authorities about Mostefai but only received an information request about him after the Paris attacks.

Bilal Hadfi, 20
French but living in Neder-over-Hembeek, Belgium, and became quickly radicalised last year. Radicalised in 2014. Went to fight in Syria and then returned to Belgium earlier this year.

“Ahmad Almohammad” , 25
A name of a 25 year-old from Idlib found on a forged Syrian passport found near one of the bodies of the attackers at the Stade de France. The fingerprints of an attacker matched those taken from a man who passed through Greece in October. Reports from Serbia say that another man has been detained there with an identical passport, suggesting that several may be in circulation, and throwing doubt on whether one of the attackers had indeed used the Balkan refugee route.