ABDELHAMID ABAAOUD:  Who was this human monster?

This homegrown Belgium terrorist was the mastermind behind the terrorist massacre that took place in Paris on the night of the 13^th of November 2015 when 129 innocent people were killed and 352 more injured by him and his fellow terrorists. In this article, I will give you his background.

Place, date of birth and origins

Abaaoud was born on the 8^th of April 1987 in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels, Belgium. He was the son of Omar Abaaoud, a shopkeeper who emigrated to Belgium from Morocco in 1975 and was one of six children. Omar, owned a clothing store off the market square in Molenbeek and the family lived nearby in a spacious if shabby corner home on Rue de l’Avenir Future Street that was near the local police station.      

Growing up

Despite his subsequent denunciations of the mistreatment suffered by Muslims in Europe, he enjoyed privileges available to few immigrants, including admission to an exclusive Catholic school, Collège Saint-Pierre d’Uccle, in an upscale residential district of Brussels. He was given a place as a first-year student in the secondary school but stayed only one year. An assistant to Saint-Pierre’s director said he had flunked out however others say that he was dismissed for poor behavior.

Abaaoud grew up in an area of Brussels where the radical Salafist ideology has flourished among some young Muslims. Salafis are those people who believe in the teachings of Islam based on the dictates of the generations of the followers of the prophet who came after him in the eighth century. Those who subscribe to the notion of Salafism are those who are unhappy with the interpretation of Islam today so they want to go to the origins of Islam and what was intended to be in the time of the prophet and his companions. To the dismay of his family, he didn’t show any religious zeal for Islam which means that religion was not what motivated him to be a terrorist.

He then drifted into a group of friends including Ibrahim and Salah Abdeslam, two brothers who, lived just a few blocks away from him in Molenbeek who engaged in various petty crimes. Abaaoud was arrested for petty crime in 2010 and spent time in the same prison in Brussels where Ibrahim Abdeslam was being held. It is not known if they were in touch while in the prison, but they did not stay long. After their release, they returned to Molenbeek, often hanging out at a dingy bar known as a hangout for drug dealers.

Ibrahim Abdeslam was one of the suicide bombers during the massacre in Paris, and his brother Salah Abdeslam, rented a car in Brussels that was used to transport some of the gunmen in the attacks on Paris.

Trip to Syria

Abaaoud suddenly moved to Syria in the beginning of 2014. Soon after his arrival in Syria, where he stayed for a time in a grand villa in Aleppo used to house French-speaking jihadists, he explained his choice in a video: “All my life I have seen the blood of Muslims flow. I pray that God breaks the backs of those who oppose him and that he exterminates them.” It is beyond me as to how he could claim that he personally had seen the blood of Muslims flowing. In my opinion, it was just an excuse to commit murder in the name of Allah which is odd considering that he wasn’t particularly religious. But then, many of these freaks use religion as their excuse to kill human beings.

Early this year, the French magazine Paris Match found a film that showed Abaaoud grinning and making jokes as he drove a pickup truck that was carrying corpses. He had joined forces with the dark side—ISIS. He later said, “I suddenly saw my picture all over the media. Thanks to Allah, the infidels were blinded by Allah.”

He also somehow persuaded his younger brother, Younes, who was still in Molenbeek and only 13, to join him in Syria. The boy left Belgium for Syria on his own without raising any suspicion from the Belgium authorities which tells you just how slack the Belgium authorities are. Abaaoud’s father later joined a state prosecutor’s case against his older son in May 2015 for having recruited Younes into ISIS.

Omar Abaaoud told local reporters at the time that his older son had dishonored the family. “He destroyed our families. I don’t ever want to see him again.” As it later turned out, he didn’t see him again. Abaaoud’s father is now living in Morocco and wants to put the property on Future Street up for sale.

Abaaoud was suspected of being a leader of a branch of the Islamic State  (ISIS) in Syria called Katibat al-Battar al Libi, which has its origins in Libya. This particular branch has attracted many Belgian fighters because of language and cultural ties. Many Belgian Muslims are of Moroccan origin  and speak a dialect found in eastern Morocco that is similar to a Libyan dialect.

There has been no evidence yet that the Paris attacks had been ordered by the Islamic State’s overall leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This means that Abaaoud and his followers committed their atrocities in Paris on their own initiatives as homegrown terrorists.

Homegrown Terrorists

These homegrown misfits are for the most part, losers in society. Homegrown terrorism or domestic terrorism is commonly associated with violent acts committed by citizens or permanent residents of a state against their own people and/or structures within that state without foreign influence in an effort to instill fear on a population or government as a tactic designed to advance political, religious, or ideological objectives. Of course, as the Paris incident has proven, these homegrown terrorists also wander into other countries to commit their terrorist acts.

Homegrown or imported terrorism is not new to the United States or Europe. The United States has uncovered a number of alleged terrorist plots that have been successfully suppressed through domestic intelligence and law enforcement. The United States has begun to account for the threat of homegrown terrorism, as shown by increased volume of literature on the subject in recent years and increased number of terrorist websites since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, began posting beheading videos in 2003. The FBI estimated in 2009 that there were approximately 15,000 websites and web forums that supported terrorist activities, with around 10,000 of them actively maintained. 80% of these sites are on U.S.-based servers.

Between May 2009 and November 2010, law enforcement made arrests related to 22 homegrown jihadist-inspired terror plots by American citizens or legal residents of the U.S. This is a significant increase over the 21 plots caught in the seven interim years after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Roughly one-quarter of these plots have been linked to major international terrorist groups but an increasing number of Americans holding high-level operational roles in these terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups.

The UK, also considers homegrown terrorism to be a considerable threat. On June 6, 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron  announced a wide-ranging strategy to prevent British citizens from being radicalized into becoming terrorists while attending university. The strategy is intended to prevent extremist speakers or groups from coming to universities.

Homegrown terrorists have an advantage in that they face fewer logistical problems, such as entering the target nations such as in Europe as well as familiarity with the nation’s society and customs, and greater ease in identifying targets. This makes them valuable assets to international terrorist organizations if for no other reason than to publicize the acts of the terrorist organizations. 

There are thousands of immature young people from westernized countries going to Syria to fight alongside of ISIS. As many as 1,500 French youth went to Syria to fight with ISIS. How many of them will return to France radicalized and return to their homes as potential homegrown terrorists.

Closing the borders

European countries are seriously considering returning to border controls to thwart the efforts of terrorists slipping into Europe from Syria. Germany and Austria have already temporarily reintroduced internal borer controls.

France seeks revenge

The president of France made it clear to its citizens and terrorists alike that they would hunt the terrorists down furiously and that is what France did. They found the mastermind of the November 13^th massacre as a result of a blunder made by one of his fellow terrorists. The fool threw away his cell phone that had the message that said in part, “It has started. Let’s go.” The phone was found in a garbage can close to the Bataclan concert venue where so many victims were killed and the authorities were able to trace the phone’s GPS to a building in a heavily Muslim district just northeast of Paris. Guess who was in that building? Abaaoud—the mastermind of the massacre that the authorities thought had escaped to Syria. There were also other terrorists in the building who were getting ready to commit another horrific terrorist act.

The door to their apartment was fortified but as soon as it was forced opened; a man inside wearing an explosive vest exploded it, injuring several police officers.  The subsequent gun battle (5000 bullets fired into the apartment along with hand grenades) caused the third floor to sink into the apartment below it. Several of the terrorists were arrested and the next day, the authorities confirmed by DNA and fingerprints of one of the three heavily mangled terrorists that they were that of the man they were looking for; Abaaoud, the mastermind of the November 13, massacre. Seven terrorists were also arrested. Belgium authorities arrested ten terrorist suspects in their own country.

If Abaaoud, this inhuman monster goes to heaven, I don’t think the 72 virgins waiting for him will be turned on at his pile of mangled flesh.