TEL AVIV, Israel – An eerie video has surfaced in which the suspected mastermind behind the Paris massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud – aka “Abu Omar Al-Belgiki” – praises the “sweetness of martyrdom” and expresses joy at seeing the “blood of infidels.”
Abaaoud is at the center of a massive manhunt and is believed to have fled to ISIS-held territory in Syria although reports overnight suggest he could have been the target of a police operation in the Saint-Denis area of Paris designed to hunt down the perpetrators of last Friday’s terror attack.
According to European officials, Abaaoud is the link between the ISIS leadership in Syria and terrorists operating in Europe. He reportedly has close ties with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS’s self-proclaimed Caliph.
The 27-year-old terrorist grew up in Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels known as a hotbed of radical Jihadist activity. According to the Associated Press, Abaaoud attended one of Belgium’s most prestigious high schools.
In a clip from 2014, Abaaoud is shown delivering a monologue from a trench in Syria. He asks, “What can be sweeter than martyrdom in the path of Allah?” According to a translation from MEMRI TV, Abaaoud also says, “It is nice to see … the blood of infidels” before calling upon his “brothers” to “hasten to jihad before it’s too late.”
View the MEMRI TV clip here.
In another video, Abaaoud drives a pickup truck dragging a pile of bloody corpses in Syria. Abaaoud laughs and tells the camera, “Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco. Now, thank God, following God’s path, we’re towing apostates, infidels who are fighting us.”
Abaaoud is also suspected of being the ringleader behind the Amsterdam-Brussels train attack in August.
In an interview with ISIS’s official English-language magazine, Dabiq, Abaaoud boasts that he is able to travel between Europe and Syria at will despite being chased by so many intelligence agencies. “My name and picture were all over the news, yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary,” said Abaaoud. “I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!”
Etienne Huver, a journalist who has met Abaaoud and obtained the video of him dragging the corpses, commented on the terrorist’s growing prominence: “You can see that he’s giving orders. You can feel a charismatic guy who’s going up in the world. … You can see a combatant who’s ready to climb the ranks.”