Abaaoud looked relaxed as he sat and sipped his whiskey, he also had the audacity to offer it to me, eyewitness said. PHOTO: AFP
Days after the deadly Paris attacks, it has emerged the mastermind of the attacks and Europe's first woman suicide bomber had no interest in religion.
Eyewitnesses have claimed they saw Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the attacks, drinking whisky hours after the attack while accounts of an 'alcohol-loving' Hasna Ait Boulahcen are also being reported.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Abdel Hamid Abaaoud’s neighbour said he saw the mastermind sitting outside the flat in Saint-Denis, drinking alcohol on Saturday afternoon.
Abaaoud linked to four French attack plots this year
"He was sitting in the street with a bottle of whisky and he offered some to me," he said.
"I was walking past and I said no because I only drink beer. But he had a big bottle of whisky and was drinking it. I only realised who he was afterwards," Jean-Jacques added.
Suspected mastermind of Paris attacks Abaaoud died in police raid: prosecutor
The young man was not the only one who saw the Belgian-born Abaaoud, 28, drinking that night.
PHOTO: ENTERPRISE NEWS AND PICTURESEstate agent, Amel Alla, speaking to Sky News, revealed that she too saw him outside the flats, less than 24 hours after the attacks, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
"That is a street I go in every day ... we said 'hello' to everyone in the group, every day they were sitting there but I noticed him because he was wearing Islamic dress with the hat ... the others were in normal clothes they always are.:
Two dead in hunt for Paris attack mastermind
"Afterwards we saw the TV and my sister said to me 'isn't that the guy we saw the other day?'' she said. Alla claimed she was "99.9 per cent sure it was him."
The police initially thought Abaaoud, the mastermind behind last week's attacks, was in Syria, but their investigations led them to a house in the Paris suburb of St Denis and heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a massive firefight and multiple explosions.
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“Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified, after comparing fingerprints, as having been killed during the (police) raid,” the statement said. “It was the body we had discovered in the building, riddled with bullets.”
Further, Europe's first suicide bomber Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, was not very different from Abaaoud. Just a day after she blew herself up during the siege, family and acquaintances gave extraordinary accounts of a young woman with a 'bad reputation' who was known for her love of alcohol and cigarettes rather than devotion to Islam.
Her brother Youssouf Ait Boulahcen said that she had had no interest in religion, never read the Holy Quran and had only started wearing a veil a month ago. Further, a photograph has also emerged of the woman posing for a selfie in the bath wearing nothing but jewellery. However, it has now emerged that the woman in the photo is not Hasna Ait Boulahcen but a woman named Nabila who lives in Morocco.
Ait Boulahcen detonated an explosives vest during the police raid in which Abaaoud was also killed.
This article originally appeared on Mail Online.
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