November 13, 2015: how the terrorists have prepared the attacks, a year earlier

Le 12 novembre 2015, en fin d’après-midi, trois voitures de location quittent la Belgique en direction de Paris. Une Polo noire démarre de la ville de Jette avec à son bord les trois terroristes du Bataclan (Samy Amimour, Ismaël Omar Mostefai et Foued Mohamed Aggad), ainsi que l’un des terroristes du Stade de France, Bilal Hadfi. Deux autres véhicules partent de Charleroi. À bord de la Seat Leon noire, deux des terroristes du Stade de France (Ahmad al Mohammad et Mohamad Almahmod) et deux des terrasses ​(Chakib Akhrouh et Abdelhamid Abaaoud). À bord de la Clio noire, les frères Abdeslam, Salah et Brahim (ce dernier se fera exploser à une terrasse de restaurant) et Mohamed Abrini qui sera jugé, lors du procès des attentats à Paris à partir du 8 septembre, pour complicité de meurtre en lien avec une entreprise terroriste.

Les trois véhicules franchissent le péage d’Hordain dans le Nord, entre 17 h 34 et 17 h 51 et celui de Chamant dans l’Oise, entre 18 h 43 et 18 h 59. Ce que l’un des terroristes a surnommé le convoi de la mort ​est alors en route vers son funeste projet.

Find here all our articles devoted to the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015

A sponsor, several operational chiefs

Selon la minutieuse enquête menée par plusieurs services de police dont la SDAT (la Sous-direction antiterroriste de la police judiciaire), c’est en Syrie, au moins un an auparavant, qu’a été prise la décision de commettre des attentats de grande ampleur en France​. L’idée émanerait d’un certain Oussama Atar, alors chef de la cellule des opérations extérieures de Daech. Une légende ​au sein de l’État islamique, à en croire un djihadiste belge. Un homme de nationalité belge et marocaine, qui à l’âge de 31 ans (en 2015) affichait déjà un CV de djihadiste endurci et entamé avant ses 20 ans. Dès 2004, il combattait les troupes américaines à Falloujah, en Irak.

To implement his deadly projects, Osama Atar relies on his Belgian cousins Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, responsible for setting up a logistics cell in Belgium.The El Bakraoui brothers will die during the attacks they will also foment in Brussels on March 22, 2016. The sponsor also recruits two Belgian and French -speaking jihadists: Najim Laachraoui who will be one of the fireworks of the November 13 attacks and who will beOne of the suicide bombers of the Brussels attacks, and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the operational chief of the attacks carried out in Paris and Saint-Denis.A experienced fighter, this 28-year-old Belgian in 2015 made several stays in Syria from 2012. He died in the assault given by the Raid, in Saint-Denis, on the night of November 17 to 18, 2015.

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Six hunts in Belgium

To carry out their project, the terrorists have shown extreme caution, making sure, at any time, to avoid being spotted.In Belgium from which the protagonists are from, they rent no less than six hideouts: an apartment in Verviers, two in Schaerbeek, one in Charleroi, one in Jette and a house in Auvelais.This research of discreet housing would have started in August 2015.

Read also:ENTRETIEN. Pointée du doigt lors des attentats, « la Belgique a mis le paquet contre le terrorisme »

Dans l’appartement de Verviers, un duplex au 3^e étage d’un immeuble dont plusieurs autres appartements n’étaient pas loués, les enquêteurs retrouveront divers matériels suggérant que les lieux avaient servi à fabriquer des ceintures explosives.

In Charleroi's apartment, few neighborhoods also except a 70 -year -old lady with Alzheimer's disease and a woman with her two children.Bilal Hadfi, one of the terrorists of the Stade de France, and Abdelhamid Abaaoud in particular stayed there.

Abandoned caches as it

The apartment in Jette will be located thanks to the complaint for scam filed by its owner, a veterinarian.The latter had rented the premises, mid-September 2015, to a man who had presented himself under a false identity, Algero Malonzo, and who had provided false payrolls, allegedly issued by a computer company.It was in fact Mohamed Bakkali, who will be one of the accused of the trial of the attacks in September and who has already been sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment for having participated in the attack on the Thalys train on August 21, 2015.

Or, le 6 mars 2016, soit environ deux semaines avant les attentats de Bruxelles, le propriétaire de l’appartement reçoit un mail, prétendument écrit par la sœur du faux Malonzo, lui annonçant que son frère ​serait entre la vie et la mort en Espagne, que l’appartement avait été vidé et que les clés lui seront restituées par la poste. Le lendemain, le propriétaire se rend sur place et découvre de nombreux dégâts. Il décide alors d’appeler l’employeur supposé de son locataire, qui lui apprend que les fiches de paie sont fausses… Cette société n’a jamais employé un quelconque Malonzo.

It is a constancy of terrorists: they will most often leave the places as they occupied them, not trying to erase their footprints.

Read also:

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Commandos land in Europe

Une grande partie des djihadistes qui vont participer aux attentats de Paris, Saint-Denis et Bruxelles arrivent en Belgique, en provenance de Syrie, entre le 1^er septembre et la mi-octobre 2015 : douze hommes répartis en cinq groupes qui seront logés dans l’une des six planques belges. Douze hommes récupérés en Allemagne ou en Hongrie par un seul individu : Salah Abdeslam.

These twelve men mainly took the migrant road.Syria, Turkey, the island of Léros in Greece and then Athens.During the last convoy, on October 14, 2015, four men land on the island of Léros: Ahmad Al Mohamad and Mohamad Almahmod, two of the three terraces terrorists, but also two individuals with Syrian identity cards in the name of Khaled Aloarand Faisal Alaifan.False papers of course.The latter two will be arrested and imprisoned on the spot, the interpreters who detected that they were not Syrians.Ahmad al Mohamad and Mohamad Almahmod, on the other hand, are released and will resume their journey towards Croatia where their trace is lost.

Salah Abdeslam undertakes several round trips to recover the terrorists.He rents high -end vehicles: Audi A6, BMW 118, BMW318… strangely, in the same rental company.But each time, he leaves his cell phone at home and uses occasional telephone lines.On September 16, 2015, he left Brussels to go to Budapest (Hungary) where he recovered Ismaël Omar Mostefai, Foued Mohamed Aggad and Samy Amimour, the three terrorists of Bataclan.That he will deposit in Brussels on September 19.A round trip of about 2,700 km in three days.

Explosive belts made "homemade"

The belts used by the terrorists of November 13 were all manufactured according to the same model.Devastating, they are composed of two explosive charges based on tatp (sorting tri -sorting peroxide) - one disposed at the abdomen of the suicide bomber, the other at the level of his back - and several hundred nuts,The whole being connected to a summary electric priming system.The whole being held in a sort of vest made up of fabric and cords.

Bref une ceinture relativement rudimentaire, mais malgré tout délicate à confectionner car si les produits entrant dans la composition du TATP se trouvent aisément (dans des grandes surfaces ou magasins de bricolage), cet explosif présente l’inconvénient d’être instable, sensible aux chocs ou à une élévation de température​, précisent les enquêteurs. D’où l’arrivée à Bruxelles d’artificiers de Daech. Osama Krayen, notamment, de nationalité suédoise, l’un des accusés du procès de septembre, est soupçonné d’avoir fabriqué ces ceintures : il est venu dans les planques belges et maniait déjà des explosifs en Syrie pour Daech. Mais aussi Ahmad Alkhad, spécialiste en explosifs au sein de la cellule des opérations extérieures de l’État islamique. Ce dernier qui a regagné la Syrie avant les attentats parisiens, s’est fait arrêter à Vienne le 1^er novembre.

Massive equipment purchases ... for other targets?

In any case, the terrorists took many precautions to buy all the necessary equipment.And they bought much more than necessary for the only Parisian attacks.Which suggests the investigators that they had envisaged other targets ...

Salah Abdeslam, it seems, came to buy receivers and remote control boxes, in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumone (Val d'Oise), in a pyrotechnic store called the fire magicians.The manager remembered after the attacks because this purchase of € 390 had seemed strange to him: the terrorist had only bought the fire to fire systems, not the artifices.

However, none of these pieces used for the Parisian attacks.What other places were they intended for?To constitute the TATP, the jihadists also fell in search of an oxygenated liquid which in normal times is used for the disinfection of pool water.They bought two cans in a first store.Then three other five -liter cans in another business.Almost twice as much as the dose used for the November 13 attacks ...

A supply of arms thanks to several sectors

The origin of firearms, on the other hand, remains more nebulous.Where do the thirty-two chargers of Kalashnikov come from, for example, in one of the vehicles that transported the terrorists as well as to the Bataclan?Investigators did not find some answers but explored several avenues.In particular a sector in Belgium, between Verviers and Liège.

Une note de renseignement de la police belge, datée de décembre 2015, indiquait ainsi qu’une semaine avant les attentats de Paris, Mohamed Bakkali et un autre individu cherchaient six kalachnikovs. Ils en auraient trouvé quatre ​à Verviers au prix de 2 200 € l’unité.

Autre piste explorée par les enquêteurs : une filière à Rotterdam, aux Pays-Bas. Ainsi, le fusil d’assaut Vzor, retrouvé dans l’appartement de Forest, le 15 mars 2016 (là où Salah Abdeslam a échappé une première fois aux policiers belges avant d’être arrêté trois jours plus tard), faisait partie d’un lot de 1 500 armes démilitarisées par la firme slovaque Kol Arms, achetées sous une fausse identité, acheminées aux Pays-Bas et revendues après avoir été remises en état de fonctionnement​, relèvent les enquêteurs.

Prepaid and false phone lines

Finally, we can only be interlocked by the multitude of other precautions taken by the terrorists to carry out their attacks and go under the radars of the police and intelligence services.

The latter thus used no less than seventeen prepaid telephone lines that it was possible to activate from false identities: six were used in Belgium, eight by commandos who came to France and three were used to find a cacheIn Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, the day after November 13.Each of these lines has been put into service in different and very widespread phones: Nokia 105, Samsung G355H…

Since December 2016, a Belgian law has obliged telephone operators to identify any buyer of a prepaid line.A law that was not yet fully respected in 2018 since the operator used by the terrorists (Lycamobile) was fine for not having respected this obligation.

In the latter's discharge, the jihadists also used a quantity of false papers which they had by a Belgian network now dismantled and nicknamed catalog.Between December 2014 and September 2015, this network whose workshop was located in Saint-Gilles (in the Brussels region), provided fourteen fake Belgian identity cards to the terrorist group.In the photos, some of the latter appeared to be even less identifiable.Each card was paid € 1,000 by the jihadists.

The members of the catalog network which, in total, negotiated more than 2,200 false papers (identity cards, passports, marriage deeds, etc.) with hundreds of individuals, were sentenced in Belgium, in January 2017, to sentencesranging from suspended prison to eight years in prison.Farid Kharkhach who is accused of having served as an intermediary between the terrorists and the catalog network, will also be tried at the trial which opens in September, in Paris.