German media say the names of three individuals involved in the November Paris attacks were in documents purported to list jihadis. Germany’s police said it has access to the same type of documents.
Public broadcasters NDR and WDR, together with the Munich daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung” have reported that the names of Samy Amimour, Foued Mohamed-Aggad and Omar Ismail Mostefai were among thousands listed on documents purported to have been leaked from the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group.
The three men used guns and suicide veststo kill 90 people at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 13. It was the worst of the attacks that occurred that day across the French capital.
The German reports on Friday said there was also indirect reference to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the organizer of the Paris killings, who recruited friends and known petty-criminals to help him carry out the attacks.
The German research team claimed to have obtained data on several thousand IS militants from a total of 22,000 documents, which were also obtained by British broadcaster Sky News.
Germany’s federal police said Thursday it had access to the same type of documents and considered them highly likely to be authentic.
Europol contact
Robert Wainwright, director of the European police organization, Europol, said they were “in contact with the British and German authorities regarding the veracity and wider availability of the information.”
“If the provenance and accuracy of the information is confirmed, it undoubtedly represents a significant intelligence gain for Western authorities and should be exploited fully,” Wainwright added.
However, some analysts in France have cast doubt on the documents as IS is known not to keep centralized records and the lists also use different names to describe the jihadi group.
Individual background
The individuals listed in the documents came from a variety of backgrounds across Europe and from the United States, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago, the German media team said.
Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old French national from a Paris suburb, blew himself up at the Bataclan music venue.
A second attacker, the 28-year-old Samy Amimour was a former bus driver from the Paris suburb of Drancy.
The third was Foued Mohamed-Aggad, 23, from Strasbourg, who had arrived in IS territory on December 18, 2013 with a large group of French jihadis that included 14 men and their families.
jm/sms (AFP, AP)
