New telephone data linking Belgian Yassine Atar to the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks helped convict him during a Belgian trial last week. He was accused of terrorist assassins and participating in and leading terrorist group activities. La Dernière Heure, Sudpresse papers, La Libre Belgique, Mediahuis papers and Het Laatste Nieuws reported on the story on Saturday.
This data regards two prepaid SIM cards bought in the same Brussels store on the 13th of November 2015. They were activated near Yassine Atar’s house. The two phones the cards were put inside were used to contact commandos in Paris. The first is the handset found in a bin by the Bataclan. The second was used by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the head of the Parisian commandos.
The Brussels Council Chamber confirmed that Yassine Atar would be kept in preventative custody for another month. He is suspected of being the group’s “communications chief”, the one who acquired the SIM cards used by the Parisian commandos. He is the cousin of the El Bakraoui brothers, the kamikazes involved in the March 2016 Brussels attacks. Atar is also thought to be linked to the two phones used in Brussels soon after the Paris attack. They were used to contact Abaaoud and his cousin. The two devices were detected near the Porte de Hal in Saint-Gilles while Yassine Atar was near there.
(Source: Belga)
