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| Ismael Omar Mostefai |
At least one of the eight assailants who created havoc around Paris Friday night was identified Sunday as Ismael Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old French citizen who had previously been flagged for links to Islamic radicalism.
A French judicial official said Mostefai’s father, a brother and other family members have been detained and are being questioned, according to the Associated Press.
The mayor of the French city of Chartres, Jean-Pierre Gorges, identified Mostefai as a resident in a Facebook post. The judicial official confirmed the name to the Associated Press, but spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
The Paris prosecutor said one of the attackers was a 29-year-old Frenchman who was born in the Chartres region who had been known to authorities for radicalism. Prosecutor Francois Molins told Sky News Mostefai had a criminal record, but didn’t spend time in jail.
"In 2010, he was blacklisted by the police due to extreme behaviors, but never been classified into any illegal extremist groups."
The unidentified prosecutor told AP he was identified by fingerprints on a finger found in the carnage of the Paris attacks Friday night, which left at least 129 dead and more than 300 wounded.
A Seat car with suspected links to the terror attacks was also found by police in Montreuil, approximately four miles east of Paris. A French official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said they couldn’t immediately confirm if it was the same black Seat car linked to the gun attacks on the Le Carillon bar and the Le Petit Cambodge restaurant in Rue Alibert in the city’s 10th district.
Molins said Saturday that gunmen armed with automatic rifles pulled up in that model car before opening fire, killing 15 people and injuring 10.
Serbian police said Sunday the owner of a passport found near a suicide bomber in Paris entered the country on Oct. 7 from Macedonia as part of the wave of asylum-seeking refugees crossing the Balkans toward Western Europe.
Police said in a statement the man, identified only as A.A., formally requested asylum in Serbia. It's the same passport holder registered as entering Greece on Oct. 3.
Officials in Greece say the passport's owner entered through Leros, one of the eastern Aegean islands that tens of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty have been using as a gateway into the European Union.
Molins told Sky News the passport was found at the Stade de France bombing site and belonged to a Syrian citizen born in 1990.
Belgian police arrested three in connection with the terror assaults Saturday. Belgium Justice Minister Koen Geens told the VRT network that the arrests came after a car with Belgian license plates was seen Friday night close to the Bataclan concert hall, scene of the deadliest assault where at least 89 people were massacred by attackers armed with AK-47s and explosives.
Geens said the car was a rental and the arrests stemmed from police raids conducted in the St. Jans Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels.
Eight terrorists wielding AK-47s and wearing suicide belts carried out a series of coordinated attacks at six sites around Paris Friday night, killing at least 129 people and wounding at least 352 others.
French President Francois Hollande called the attacks an “act of war” in a nationally televised address Saturday. Hollande vowed France “will be merciless toward the barbarians of Islamic State group.”
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the apparent meticulously planned attacks and has warned that France would remain at the “top of the list of targets” over its airstrike on the militant group in Syria and Iraq.
ISIS, in an online statement, described Paris as "the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe" and described the attackers as "eight brothers wrapped in explosive belts and armed with machine rifles."
French police said Saturday they believed all of the attackers were dead but were still searching for possible accomplices. The French prosecutor's office said seven of the eight assailants died in suicide bombings.
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