ELIMINATED
- Full name: Abdelhamid Abaaoud
- Pseudonym: Abu Omar al-Belgiki, Abu Omar al-Sousi
- Alternatives: N/a
- Location: Belgian, active in Belgium, France, Greece & Syria
- Affiliation: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh], Khalid Zerkani Network [KZN]
Abdelhamid Abaaoud (° 1987) was a notorious Belgian jihadi of Moroccan descent from Brussels. He apparently enjoyed a good upbringing and attended good schools, but was drawn to crime and became involved with local gangs.1 In 2006, Abaaoud was convicted for the first time after he was caught concealing stolen goods.2 Abaaoud later linked up with associates of the infamous Salafi preacher Khalid Zerkani.3 Over the next years, he committed several robberies and acts of aggression.4 Abaaoud was jailed on two separate occasions in 2011 and 2012.5 He became very religious during his last stint in prison.6 Following his release in September 2012, Abaaoud quickly evolved into an important cadre of the Khalid Zerkani Network [KZN].7
In March 2013, Abaaoud traveled to Syria for the first time and joined the Brigade of the Emigrants [KaM; Katibat al-Muhajireen].8 The next years, he would travel back and forth between Belgium and Syria.9 While in Syria, he regularly fought on the frontlines. In March 2014, he was famously filmed while dragging the bodies of dead regime fighters behind a pickup truck following clashes in the town of Haritan.10 In the summer of 2014, Abaaoud joined the DaIISh’s elite Libyan Brigade of the Prophets’ Sword [KaBL; Katibat al-Battar al-Libi].11 He rapidly ascended through the ranks and became a commander. Abaaoud is sometimes even alleged to have come into contact with top DaIISh leader Ibrahim al-Badri [aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi].12
Abaaoud soon shifted his focus to launching attacks in Europe. He helped coach the attacker who killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels in May 2014.13 Before long, Abaaoud emerged as one of the key coordinators of the DaIISh’s operations in Europe.14 The DaIISh deliberately spread false rumors of his death after he had been targeted in a French air strike on Raqqa in October 2014.15 News of his purported elimination allowed Abaaoud to travel more easily into Europe. In late 2014, he departed for the continent to set up a module aimed at carrying out large-scale attacks in Belgium.16 The cell was dismantled however in a series of raids by Belgian security forces across the country on Jan. 15, 2015. Two militants were killed in a shootout with special forces in the town of Verviers.17 The operations came shortly before the cell’s members were scheduled to launch attacks. Abaaoud who was in Greece at the time of the raids, managed to flee back to Syria.18
Abaaoud continued to assist in the coordination of the DaIISh’s operations in Europe. He allegedly guided the terrorist behind the plan to attack a church in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif.19 In April 2015, the plot failed after the militant got hurt during preparations. Abaaoud was also thought to have helped supervise a thwarted plan to target a rock music concert in France in the summer of 2015.20 The terrorist who attacked passengers aboard a high-speed train in the north of the country in August also reportedly acted on his orders.21 By now, Abaaoud had become one of Europe’s best-known and most wanted terrorists. Earlier in July 2015, a Belgian court sentenced him in absentia to twenty years in prison.22 Even though Europe’s security forces were on guard for him, Abaaoud managed to evade detection and continued to prepare attacks.
Abaaoud acted as the team leader of the terrorists who carried out the devastating series of attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015 in which 130 people were killed.23 He was killed when French special forces raided his hideout in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis on Nov. 18, 2015.24 Abaaoud was reportedly scheduled to blow himself up at a shopping center in the Défense neighborhood of Paris the next day.25
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