Who Planned This?

As we read, hear and watch the horrifying accounts of the Paris carnage of Friday 13, we find out that the dreadful death toll could have been higher if the suicide bomber who was stopped at the gate of the Stade de France had managed to pass the security check. Subjected to an overload of information as we are, there’s a question that lurks behind our aghast faces: “Who’s behind this?” Yes, we know it’s the Islamic State, but who is the person that meticulously designed the synchronized Paris attacks? The Nº 1 Suspect is Abdelhamid Abaahoud, a 27-year-old Belgian citizen whose Moroccan parents raised him in the multi-ethnic Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean and sent him to one of the country’s most prestigious high schools, Saint-Pierre d’Uccle.

This jihadist fanatic, so committed to Islamic terrorism that he’s recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria, was interviewed in February for “Dabiq” –Islamic State’s official magazine in English–, under the false name Abu Umar al-Baljiki. In this piece he repeatedly bragged about his superior brainpower, compared to what he calls the “crusader intelligence” of the Western World.  «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», he bragged.

This seems to sustain what French author Michel Houellebecq poses in his latest and controversial novel “Soumission”. Once second and third-generation immigrants of Arab origin are accepted as nationals by their countries of reception, some radical minorities misappropriate Western advantages and liberties, pilfering them to enforce the Sharia Law and make Islam mandatory. After the Friday 13 carnage in Paris, both President Hollande and Prime Minister Valls have vowed to be “merciless” in retaliation.