Brussels – Two weeks ago, the mayor of Molenbeek ordered the closure of a neighborhood bar where Brussels police had found young men dealing drugs and smoking dope over the summer.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Last Friday, the owner blew himself up at another laid-back corner cafe, this time in Paris, on a mission of retribution from Islamic State.
Brahim Abdeslam’s journey from barkeeper to suicide bomber remains a mystery, along with the whereabouts of his younger brother Salah, now on the run as Europe’s most wanted man but until recently the manager of Brahim’s bar, Les Beguines.
French police accidentally permitted the suspected driver of one group of gunmen, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, to avoid arrest at the border Saturday and cross to his native Belgium. On Monday, Belgian police in balaclavas, gas masks and body armor raided Abdeslam’s suspected hideout in the Molenbeek district of Brussels but came out empty-handed.
The brother of Salah Abdeslam is calling for him to turn himself in.
Mohamed Abdeslam, who spoke to French TV BFM Tuesday, says his brother was devout but showed no signs of being a radical Islamist.
Abdeslam said: “Of course I call on him to turn himself over to the police. The best would be for him to give himself up so that justice can shed all the light on this.”
Police in Molenbeek arrested Mohamed, but freed him Monday without charge.
After he left police custody, Mohamed Abdeslam told reporters that his family couldn’t believe that both of his brothers were jihadists. He said all three siblings grew up in Belgium and seemingly were content with life in the West.
“I have not been involved in any way with what happened on Friday the 13th in Paris. We are an open-minded family. We never had any problem with justice,” he said.
He said he didn’t know where his brother Salah was or whether he would surrender to police, and expressed familial loyalty to him despite his shock over the mass killings. “You have to understand that we have a family, we have a mom, and he remains her child,” he said.
According to French police, Brahim detonated a suicide vest at the Comptoir Voltaire, a cafe close to the Bataclan music hall where gunmen killed 89. The explosion seriously wounded several other people.
Salah, police say, rented a Volkswagen car that was found near the Bataclan with Belgian plates and he was later checked, but not arrested, near the Belgian border, in a car with two others.
French and other Western intelligence agencies face an urgent challenge to track down the surviving members of the three Islamic State units who inflicted the unprecedented bloodshed in France and, perhaps more importantly, to target their distant commanders in IS-controlled parts of Syria.
Police have yet to announce the capture of anyone suspected of direct involvement in Friday’s slaughter. Seven attackers died — six after detonating suicide belts and a seventh from police gunfire — but Iraqi intelligence officials told The Associated Press that its sources indicated 19 participated in the attack and five others provided hands-on logistical support.