Paris Attackers Appear in Video
January 29, 2016
FROM Brandon Martinez at Non-Aligned Media:
A new, Hollywood-caliber video just released by Islamic State’s media arm al-Hayat appears to at least partially confirm the official narrative of the Paris attacks. [Editor: Links to the videos omitted.]
The video shows eight of the alleged Paris attackers delivering their final statements before gruesomely decapitating various prisoners in orange jumpsuits. Unlike previous beheading videos featuring ‘Jihadi John,’ the latest snuff film does not cut out before the actual murders take place, but displays in full bloodcurdling gory detail the sequential killings, some in slow motion.
The video was obviously shot before the IS militants ostensibly departed for their terror mission in Paris, which they state in the video was personally ordered by IS “caliph” Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a former Camp Bucca detainee who was oddly “on good terms” with US military authorities during his stay at the American prison in Iraq.
The twisted video opens with a statement by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged “mastermind” of the Paris operation, in a house in an unknown location. The rest of the video appears to have been shot somewhere in Iraq or Syria, probably near one or both of IS’s strongholds, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. The Paris attackers that do appear in the video are listed as follows: Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, Brahim Abdeslam, Omar Ismail Mostefai, Samy Amimour, Bilal Hadfi, Ali al-Iraqi, Ukashah al-Iraqi, Chakib Akrouh and Abu Fuad al-Faransi.
While the video significantly weakens the case for a MIHOP (made it happen on purpose) explanation of the Paris events, it does not disprove a LIHOP (let it happen on purpose) interpretation. A slew of forewarnings issued to French authorities before the attacks should have provided them enough signals to be able to prevent it, but strangely they did not.
As I reported in November, the draconian surveillance measures implemented in France after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January of 2015 make it hard to believe such a sophisticated cross-continental attack could have been mounted without any intervention from authorities. That these IS members could overcome all of the innumerable logistical hurdles to successfully organize and pull off the November 13 massacre is extraordinary.
It has yet to be explained how so many radicals – most of whom were well-known to authorities, had been placed on terror watch lists and several of whom had already been indicted in absentia for terror offences – were able to travel into Europe from IS-held territory in Syria and Iraq undetected. Did they all ride together in first-class on an Air France flight? Then, once inside the gates of Europe, these human poltergeists manage to secure a safe house, rental cars, AK-47s, explosives, communications equipment, and everything else needed to pull off this multi-faceted attack. None of it is feasible without French authorities actively protecting the perps and deliberately looking the other way as they prepared the operation.
France received multiple prior warnings about an imminent attack from both Turkey and Iraq, but they seem to have been completely ignored. [See more here.]