Chakib Akrouh

Abdeslam (born 15 September 1989) is a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent.

He grew up in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, where he was involved in petty crime and drug dealing.

The Brussels Islamic State terror cell was a group involved in large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 (130 killed) and Brussels in March 2016 (32 killed).

The terror cell was connected to the Islamic State (IS), a jihadist terrorist organisation primarily based in Syria and Iraq.

On 13 November 2015, a group of ten IS terrorists carried out a series of coordinated attacks across the French capital, Paris; 130 people were killed in the attacks.

Seven of the terrorists died during the attacks; two of the remaining three were tracked down five days later and killed in the 2015 Saint-Denis raid along with the woman who had provided them with a hideout.

The tenth attacker failed to detonate his suicide vest and returned to the Belgian capital, Brussels.

The police manhunt for the tenth attacker and further accomplices led them to Brussels.

Between 21 and 25 November, the city was placed in lockdown due to the threat of another terrorist attack.

Three teams, comprising one team of four people and two teams of three people each, carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Seven attackers died at the scenes of their attacks.

Two of the attackers were killed five days later during the Saint-Denis police raid, while Salah Abdeslam returned to Brussels.

Three suicide bombers blew themselves up near the Stade de France:

Hadfi was a 20-year-old French national of Moroccan descent who had been living in Belgium.

He attempted to enter the Stade de France but blew himself up nearby after being denied entry.

He had gone to Syria in early 2015 and his name was on a list of 800 suspected Belgian jihadists.

Belgian authorities were unaware of his return to Europe.

Another of the Stade de France bombers carried a fake Syrian passport with the name "Ahmad al-Mohammad".

His fingerprints matched those of a man registered as a Syrian refugee under the same name on the island of Leros in October 2015 upon his arrival from Turkey.

During the summer and autumn of 2015 he participated in preparations for the Paris and Brussels attacks.

He picked up members of the group returning from Syria via the migrant route in Germany and Hungary and drove them to Brussels.

He hired two of the cars used in the Paris attacks and bought material for making explosives.

On 15 March 2016, the police raided a flat in the Brussels district of Forest, killing one terrorist whilst two others escaped.

The two who escaped were arrested three days later on 18 March in the Molenbeek district of Brussels.

A second major attack then took place on 22 March in Brussels in which coordinated bombings at the airport and at a metro station killed 32 people.

Three suicide bombers died, while another two fled without detonating their explosives.

In June 2022, after a ten-month trial in Paris, a total of 19 men were convicted of being involved in the terror cell that planned and carried out the Paris attacks, with a twentieth man convicted of criminal but not terrorist offences.

In July 2023, after a seven-month trial in Brussels, six men were convicted of terrorist murder and attempted murder in relation to the Brussels attacks.

Another two were cleared of terrorist murder and attempted murder but convicted of terrorist activity, while two were cleared of all charges.

In January 2016, the ISIS online magazine Dabiq identified him as an Iraqi national.

After four months hiding in Brussels, Abdeslam was arrested on 18 March 2016 in Molenbeek.

Three days earlier he had escaped from a hideout in the Forest district of Brussels during a police shootout.

In January 2017 a declassified French intelligence file identified the bomber as Ammar Ramadan Mansour Mohamad al-Sabaawi, an Iraqi in his twenties from Mosul.

ISIS paid al-Sabaawi's family $5,000 and a flock of sheep after his death.

The third Stade de France bomber was an Iraqi national.

He travelled together with "Ahmad al-Mohammad" and used a fake Syrian passport with the name of "M. al Mahmod".

Abdeslam drove the three Stade de France bombers to the football stadium.

He was then supposed to detonate his own suicide vest in the 18th arrondissement (district) of Paris but the device malfunctioned and he returned to Brussels the following morning.

In April 2018, Abdeslam was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his part in the Forest shoot-out.

In June 2022, at the Paris attacks trial he was sentenced to a full-life term in prison.