Tag Archives: militant

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

Venezuela crisis enters dangerous phase as Maduro foes go militant

Supporters of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro shout slogans as they gather outside the National Assembly building during a session in Caracas, Venezuela

By Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) – In a curious convergence of events on the same day last week, four Venezuelan provincial courts issued identical rulings, state governors quickly hit Twitter to celebrate, then the election board emailed a short but bombshell statement.

Opposition hopes for a referendum to recall President Nicolas Maduro were dashed, on grounds of fraud in an initial signature drive. The vote was off.

For many in the opposition, that settled a years-old debate about the nature of Venezuela’s socialist government, uniting them in conviction they are now fighting a dictatorship.

Their new militancy heightens the risk of unrest as the South American OPEC member of 30 million people grapples with a dangerous economic and political crisis.

“Can anyone in the world now really doubt that Venezuela is living in tyranny?” said housewife Mabel Pinate, 62, dressed in white among thousands of protesters who took to the streets against Maduro on Wednesday.

“We are sick of this. It’s time to toughen up and do what we must to save Venezuela,” added Pinate, whose husband was fired from state oil company PDVSA by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez and whose two children have gone abroad.

After pinning its hopes on a referendum this year – which could have triggered a presidential election and put them in power after 17 years of leftist rule – the enraged opposition Democratic Unity coalition has taken its gloves off.

It is holding a symbolic political trial of Maduro in the legislature, organizing daily street protests, and shunning talks with the government that had been announced by the Vatican for this weekend.

Recalling tactics that led to a short-lived coup against Chavez in 2002 and a shutdown of the oil industry, the coalition has also called for a general strike on Friday and a march to the Miraflores presidential palace next week.

“We’ve reached the limit,” said Henrique Capriles, a usually moderate opposition leader, calling the government “Satan.”

“Does the opposition have anything to negotiate with the government? Nothing. Why does the government want dialogue? Because the water has risen to its neck,” he said.

Some hardliners, most notably veteran activist Maria Corina Machado and jailed protest leader Leopoldo Lopez’ wife Lilian Tintori, are calling for Gandhi-style civil disobedience.

‘I FEAR NOBODY’

The government is vowing an iron fist.

It says well-known troublemakers, who were behind the 2002 putsch, are again seeking a coup against an elected government, with the help of the United States and compliant foreign media.

“I fear nobody and nothing!” Maduro told red-shirted supporters at one of his daily rallies and TV appearances this week.

The ruling Socialist Party’s No. 2, Diosdado Cabello said any companies heeding the strike call would be seized by workers and the military. “We’re not going to allow craziness.”

Long proud of its democratic credentials after winning numerous elections under Chavez, the ruling Socialist Party says it is the opposition flouting Venezuela’s democracy given that independent institutions shot down the referendum.

Officials also argue that the very existence of protests and virulent public criticism of Maduro prove democracy is alive and well in Venezuela.

Maduro insists the referendum decision was made by independent judges and electoral officials based on technical criteria, and denies the Socialist Party had any sway over the result. But critics say both the judiciary and electoral council have long been in the government’s pocket.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly shot down legislation  passed by the opposition-dominated Congress while interpreting the constitution to favor the executive branch and limit the reach of lawmakers.

And the elections council has steadily shifted the requirements for requesting the recall vote.

Maduro would have faced probable defeat and removal from power if the referendum had gone ahead.

His challenge now is to contain street protests and respond to deep anger among all Venezuelans at the dreadful state of the economy.

Food shortages, long shopping lines and runaway prices have eroded the ruling “Chavismo” movement’s popularity among the poor and seen Maduro’s ratings slide to just over 20 percent.

But as unhappy as they are, disaffected former “Chavistas” are not yet ready to throw their lot in en masse with coalition leaders they still view with suspicion.

“They are all from privileged families. How can they represent me?” said Orlando Diaz, 47, a mechanic and father of four from a slum in western Caracas who has seen work dry up and income tumble during a nearly three-year recession.

“Do I hate Maduro? Yes. He has betrayed the comandante (Chavez), he is a fool. Will I join these people in their crying and marching? No way. Frankly, I don’t know where to turn. I don’t see a future, I just have to find bread for my family today and tomorrow. That’s all I think about.”

The opposition’s challenge is how to incorporate people like Diaz and his neighbors from the gritty hillside Antimano “barrio”, into their street push. On Wednesday, they drew hundreds of thousands nationwide, but students and traditional supporters remained at the vanguard.

Scores of people on both sides were killed during anti-Maduro protests in 2014 and there was new violence on Wednesday, with dozens of injuries and arrests. A policemen was shot dead in an incident the government blamed on demonstrators.

“A recall referendum in 2016 would have meant the automatic exit from power of ‘Chavismo’,” said local pollster Luis Vicente Leon. “Eschewing democratic codes and values, the government preferred to assume … the risk of a popular reaction.”

The next presidential election is due at the end of 2018 and most Venezuelans assume another candidate will emerge from within “Chavismo” instead of Maduro. But given the events of recent days, opposition supporters are beginning to wonder if that election will even take place.

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)