How the Paris attackers honed their assault through trial and error

Evidence has emerged about how the group of at least nine militants pulled off the Paris
assaults through hit and trial method.
Exploiting Europe's passport-free zone and
patchy intelligence sharing, Abaaoud and his team moved not just across the Continent, but to Syria and back.

PARIS: The gunfire had still not subsided, and those who could were running for their lives. But one man was crossing Paris to get close to the scenes of death.. . Just after 10pm on Nov 13, the man, Abdelhamid
Abaaoud, parked his rented getaway car in the eastern suburb of Montreuil, leaving behind the Kalashnikov he is believed to have used to shoot diners in central Paris a half-hour before.

He boarded the No. 9 subway line and returned to the part of the city that was still under siege.
Before the night was over, investigators say, he had walked past the shattered cafes and bloodied concert hall that had been among his targets.
. . A foot soldier turned lieutenant in the Islamic State's hierarchy, Abaaoud was a 26-year - old Belgian.
. . More than two weeks after the attacks, as
France buries its dead and a lengthening list of Abaaoud's suspected confederates are rounded up, more evidence has emerged about how the group of at least nine militants pulled off the assaults...In January, the police raided a safehouse in the
Belgian town of Verviers, thwarting a plot that proved to be a chilling precursor to the
synchronized murder that played out across the French capital 10 months later. But after phone taps uncovered the Verviers plan, Abaaoud began
using encryption technology and may have
concealed his communications in that way with
his Paris team, intelligence officials said.
. . Exploiting Europe's passport-free zone and
patchy intelligence sharing, Abaaoud and his
team moved not just across the Continent, but to Syria and back.
. . The attack in Paris was the deadliest terrorist assault on the Continent in a decade, killing 130 people. It reverberated across the region, forcing
Brussels to lockdown for four days, spurring
Germany to cancel a soccer match and prompting
Britain to increase its military budget after years
of cutbacks.
. . President Francois Hollande of France has pledged
to defeat the Islamic State's "cult of death."
Yet intelligence officials warned of the West's
vulnerabilities. Paris, they fear, heralds a new
era of terror, one that could play out on the
streets of European capitals for years to come.
. . "They have patience," said one French official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They
have an army of willing martyrs that feed on an ideology that is immune to bullets."

. .A combination of photos of Paris attack suspects.

. . Earlier this year, an official at Europol, the Continent's law enforcement agency, paid an urgent visit to Athens to ask for help tracking
down Abaaoud, according to news media reports.
After calls were tracked to Verviers, a SWAT
team raided a residence there on Jan. 15, turning
up evidence of surprising sophistication. The
police found automatic weapons, a large quantity
of cash, a body camera, multiple cellphones,
hand-held radios and fraudulent identification
documents, according to a US Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment.
. . They also found the precursor chemicals for the
explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP,
according to the document, which was the same
chemical compound used in the suicide belts in
Paris.
. . Until then, says David Thomson, the author of a
book on French jihadists, Abaaoud was known
mostly for his appearance in a grotesque Islamic
State video, whooping and laughing while
dragging corpses behind a 4-x-4 truck.
. . In 2010, Abaaoud planned to break into a garage
in the Belgian countryside with a childhood
friend. But he slipped off the roof, and the pair
were later found soaking wet and nearing
hypothermia on a river edge, recalled his former
lawyer, Alexandre Chateau.
. . The bungled burglary was unremarkable, but the
partnership was not: Abaaoud's accomplice in the
burglary was one of two brothers who would later
be at Abaaoud's side during the Paris attacks.
. . Sometime between late 2013 and early 2014,
Abaaoud joined a brigade called the Mujahedeen
Shura Council based in Aleppo, Syria, which
would soon pledge allegiance to the Islamic
State.