PARIS // A 23 year old man from the eastern French city of Strasbourg has been identified as the third gunman involved in the attack at Paris’s Bataclan music hall, police sources said Wednesday.
Foued Mohamed Aggad went to Syria with his brother and a group of friends at the end of 2013, according to a source close to the investigation.
The two other attackers involved in the massacre of 90 concertgoers — Omar Ismail Mostefai, 29, and 28-year-old former Paris bus driver Samy Amimour — had also been in Syria.
Two of the gunmen blew themselves up with suicide belts packed with explosives after the killing spree, the worst of the November 13 Paris attacks.
The third was shot by police who stormed the venue.
Most of a group of six men from Strasbourg who went to Syria with Aggad were arrested in the Meinau area of the city on their return in May last year, but Aggad stayed on, the source said.
Investigators believe two brothers, Mourad and Yassine Boudjellal, were killed there fighting for ISIL.
When questioned on their return, the men, aged between 23 and 26, claimed they had been horrified by what they had witnessed in Syria and started to dribble back to France from February 2014.
Aggad was identified at the end of last week after his DNA was matched with those of his family members, the police source said.
Police suspect the men had been recruited by Mourad Fares, who was known to French intelligence for recruiting jihadist fighters through social media and the Internet.
The arrested men claimed they had gone to Syria for humanitarian work but are suspected of ISIL.
Nearly 1,500 people were watching the Californian band Eagles of Death Metal play when the shooting began last month, leaving 90 dead and hundreds hurt, mostly young people.
The band made an emotional return to the venue on Tuesday, with lead singer Jesse Hughes in tears as he laid a single flower among the piles of tributes to the dead.
The Bataclan’s owners have said they want to reopen the hall at the end of next year and the Eagles of Death Metal say they want to play in the first concert.
* Agence France-Presse
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
'The Sky is Everywhere'
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The specs: 2019 BMW X4
Price, base / as tested: Dh276,675 / Dh346,800
Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 354hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 500Nm @ 1,550rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.0L / 100km
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Europe’s rearming plan
- Suspend strict budget rules to allow member countries to step up defence spending
- Create new "instrument" providing €150 billion of loans to member countries for defence investment
- Use the existing EU budget to direct more funds towards defence-related investment
- Engage the bloc's European Investment Bank to drop limits on lending to defence firms
- Create a savings and investments union to help companies access capital
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- margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars;
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- infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes,
- many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pasta and pizza dishes, poultry and fish nuggets and sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products, powdered and packaged instant soups, noodles and desserts.
