Abdelhamid Abaaoud, whose mutilated body was found after St-Denis police raid, travelled into and through the EU from Syria on at least two occasions in past 12 months

The Syria-based Belgian jihadi suspected of planning the bloody attacks that killed 129 people in Paris died a day ago in a hail of police bullets, French officials confirmed on Thursday, raising serious questions about how one of Europe’s most wanted men could travel freely around the continent.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Abdelhamid Abaaoud, an Islamic State extremist believed by French intelligence services to have been in Syria, was killed on Wednesday in the ferocious firefight at a crumbling terrorist hideout north of Paris.

Confirmation that a top terrorist suspect had travelled into and through the EU from Syria on at least two occasions in the past 12 months, passing checks in countries including Belgium and Germany without alarms being triggered, has put European leaders under intense pressure to get a grip on Europe’s external and internal borders.

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The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Abaaoud had played a “decisive role” in the Paris attacks and was suspected of involvement in four of the six terror plots that French intelligence services had foiled this year.

But, Cazeneuve pointed out, he was the subject of both a European and an international arrest warrant – and no EU intelligence service had alerted France that he was on European soil.

The interior minister said information – from a non-European agency – that the jihadi may recently have been in Greece only reached France on 16 November, three days after the attacks.

The mutilated body of the 28-year-old, linked with half a dozen terrorist plots across Europe, was found in the rubble of the badly damaged apartment in St-Denis and identified from skin samples.

As the head of Europol, the EU police agency, revealed much higher figures for suspected and potential “foreign fighters” on its watchlists, EU interior ministers, meeting on Friday at France’s request, are set to unveil a battery of mainly electronic measures aimed at combatting terror and improving border controls.



Many have been mooted before, particularly after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in January, but not implemented. “But because of Paris, it’s the best chance to push them through because that will vanish in a few weeks,” a senior EU diplomat admitted.

Europe now had “to move fast and firmly,” Cazeneuve said, calling on his fellow ministers to agree on a Europe-wide passenger information register, improved controls along Europe’s external borders, and better coordination against arms-trafficking.



“France has been calling for these measures for more than 18 months, and some progress has been made,” Cazeneuve said. “But it is not fast enough, and it does not go far enough ... Everyone must understand Europe has to organise, recover, defend itself against the terrorist threat.”

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Revealing figures vastly exceeding those previously disclosed, Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, told the European parliament’s civil liberties committee that the agency’s database contained the names of 28,000 people in the EU who needed to be monitored for possible connections to terrorism.

The figures included the confirmed names of 2,000 foreign fighters who had been to Syria from EU countries. Wainwright reckoned the real figure was 5,000. A further 8,000 names referred to supporters and sympathisers.

The Paris attacks represented a quantum leap in the jihadi threat to Europe, Wainwright said: “I regard this as the most serious terrorist threat facing Europe for 10 years. Europe has experienced a Mumbai-style terrorist attack, with indiscriminate shootings and bombings over a wide area. Further attacks are likely.”

The EU interior ministers are likely to announce the creation of a new European counter-terrorism centre from January. The Warsaw-based border agency Frontex is also to be given new counter-terrorism powers, a seven-page draft statement obtained by the Guardian says.

National governments have been promising for months to beef up funding, resources, equipment and staffing for Frontex to cope better with the immigration crisis. They have consistently failed to deliver on their pledges.

The interior minister’s draft statement says that “member states undertake to implement immediately the necessary systematic and coordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement”.

This means EU citizens leaving or entering the Schengen free travel area, which encompasses 26 countries, may have their identities checked against Schengen databases and computer systems for links to terrorism or organised crime. This does not happen at present since Schengen rules stipulate that EU citizens should be checked only perfunctorily.

Abaaoud, a native of the Molenbeek borough of Brussels, carried a Belgian passport. “It’s not enough to say we need new border controls for non-EU citizens,” said a senior diplomat in Brussels. “We need the will and the capability to do this for everyone. Just like the Americans.”

The attacks on Paris shops, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France – barely two kilometres from the scene of Wednesday’s shootout – were carried out by a Belgium-based cell in close contact with Isis in Syria.

At least two people, including a woman identified by police as Abaaoud’s cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, who blew herself up by detonating an explosive vest, and a man hit by gunshots, died in the St-Denis assault.

Identification took longer than expected because of the condition of the bodies – parts of Aitboulahcen’s spine reportedly landed on a police car – and the dangerous state of the partly collapsed building, the entire third floor of which caved in during the seven-hour siege.

Eight people were also arrested during the raid, launched after a tip-off on Monday followed by extensive phone taps and surveillance, which led police to suspect Abaaoud was in the building.

Abaaoud was jailed in 2010 for armed robbery and reportedly joined Isis in 2013. He has since boasted of his ability to slip at will between Syria and Europe.



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He was suspected of organising a terror cell in Verviers, Belgium, which was broken up in a shootout with police in January, and involvement in a foiled attack in August on a Thalys train. A notorious 2014 Isis propaganda video showed him dragging the mutilated bodies of several of the terror group’s opponents behind a pickup truck.

Prosecutors have identified five of the seven attackers who died in Paris: four Frenchmen and a foreigner who was fingerprinted in Greece last month, claimed asylum in Serbia, and was carrying a Syrian passport, possibly fake. All had spent time in Syria.

Police are still hunting one of the supposed gunmen, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in the attacks, and another unidentified man they believe was directly involved.



Two suspected accomplices who allegedly drove Salah Abdeslam back from Paris to the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, a longstanding hotbed of Islamic extremism, after the attacks, are being questioned by police in Belgium.

As the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, announced a package of anti-terror measures on Thursday and pledged €400m (£281m) in extra funding, police made nine arrests in raids in the Brussels region linked to Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up at the Stade de France.

Six days into a national state of emergency, the French parliament voted to extend it to February. Further security measures are being discussed, including placing under house arrest anyone considered a public threat; barring suspects from communicating with each other; and allowing police to carry out searches at any time without the prior approval of a judge.

The French president, François Hollande, will meet his Russian counterpart,Vladimir Putin, and the US president, Barack Obama, next week in a bid to build a global coalition to “destroy” the jihadis. French and Russian jets have pounded targets in Raqqa, the de facto Isis capital in northern Syria, since the weekend.