Paris attack mastermind “sneaked to France with 90 extremists”

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Belgian who led the November 13 attacks on Paris bragged that he slipped into France with a group of 90 extremists from Europe and the Middle East, the Associated Press reports citing the testimony from the woman who tipped police to his location.

In an interview aired Thursday, February 4, by RMC television and confirmed by her lawyer, the woman identified only as Sonia said Abdelhamid Abaaoud was proud of the attack that killed 130 people.

The 42-year-old woman was with Abaaoud's female cousin on November 15 when the younger woman got a call from a Belgian number. It was Abaaoud, asking for a hideout.

The two women drove to a deserted industrial road outside Paris and Abaaoud came out of a bush. It was at that moment she realized who he was, according to her testimony. What followed is Abaaoud's only known conversation about the attacks and their aftermath — with a woman so horrified and angered by the bloodshed that she challenged him repeatedly.

She said the Islamic State group commander told her he had entered France without documents, among a group of 90 people that had scattered around the Paris region. She accused him of killing innocent people, which he denied, and challenged the deaths of Muslims that night. Those, she said, he described as "collateral damage."

"He was proud of himself. That was the worst," she said. "He appeared to fear no one, a superman. He talked about it as though he was shopping and had gotten a bargain on a box of detergent."

His description of the triple suicide bombings at the French national stadium, which claimed only one victim amid a night of carnage: "The exact words of his response were: 'There were some failures. I am here to make sure that there will be no more.'"