Manhunt for dead men?

In a sensational second part of today’s double-header on the Paris attacks, The Slog dismisses the idea of a Group of Seven attackers, shows the Prosecutor’s timings to be nonsense, and suggests it was ‘convenient’ rather than helpful to find the passport of an alleged ‘fake refugee’ at one of the crime scenes.

Put simply, what I’ve done below is treat Friday night’s incidents as the police would a criminal investigation….not one involving politicians of course – a real one. What follows is not conspiracy theory codswallop, but rather a review of information anomalies, the real nature of the attackers, and the motives of those with with something to gain from the simplistic conclusion, “Fake refugees are responsible, and this supports a policy of mass deportation”.

ANOMALIES IN THE INFORMATION SUPPLIED TO THE MEDIA

Paris prosecutors confirmed last night that ‘seven attackers, in three groups, staged the six assaults across Paris on Friday evening’.

We know from several Rock concert witnesses that four out of the seven were there. Logic would therefore suggest (but not prove) that the split was 2, 2 and four, and they each took on 2 targets.

The first ‘big’ attack is on the Stade de France, between 9.30 and 9.53pm. Four terrorists were involved; three blew themselves up, and one was shot dead by police.

They all had entry tickets for the France v Germany game, but 99% of people are already inside because the kick off was at 9pm. Oddly, instead of choosing to melt in with the crowd, they try to gain entrance half an hour into the game. One is frisked by suspicious police at around 9.28: he backs off and blows himself up. Within twenty minutes, all four are dead.

That leaves three in the groups to tackle five more targets. However, while the SdF attack is taking place, the second big hit starts, with by far the most casualties.

At 9.40 pm, three gunmen enter the Bataclan rock concert and go on an immediate killing spree. They are surrounded by cops, and stay there: none of them get out alive: two blow themselves up, and one is shot dead. The number ‘three’ is however disputed by witnesses, like this one:

“I saw the four assailants clearly.Their faces weren’t hidden. All very young, in their twenties. Not especially handsome, but not at all devilish looking. They wore big tunics, one beige, and two all in black. The one in the beige tunic had a short beard. They were all Middle Eastern types but spoke French without any accent.”

But in the heat of such trauma, memories go haywire. Let’s assume the witnesses are wrong.

Whether they are or not, by 9.53pm, all seven of the terrorists are either dead or under siege.

However, at the intersection of Rue Faidherbe and Rue de Charonne at 9.36pm, one guy gets out of a car with a high-calibre weapon, and starts firing at people inside La Belle Equipe restaurant. So either a dead guy manages to be in two places at once, or the prosecutors figure of seven gunmen is wrong.

However, another witness tells the cops, “It lasted at least three minutes. Then they got back in their car and headed towards Charonne station. There was blood everywhere”. So now there are two dead blokes in two places at once.

Four minutes later, one lone terrorist detonates his suicide belt inside the Voltaire restaurant at 9.40pm, and the prosecutors claim that this attacker had been involved in the attack at the nearby Bataclan. So the witnesses were right, not the authorities: there were four men at the rock concert, and one left for his next target.

This must now mean that at least nine Jihadists are involved.

This is the point at which the authorities’ version really starts to unravel. Because the first attack of the evening  takes place around 9.25pm at two restaurants in Rue Alibert – first at Le Carillon bar in and then across the road at Le Petit Cambodge. Witnesses here see two vehicles, and two men outside the vehicles. They then drive off. So it could be two drivers and two shooters, or just two lone guys in two cars. But just eleven minutes later, the two cars have become one….and there are two guys outside the car shooting. So we have a net increase of one further terrorist.

BUT during that eleven minutes at 9.32pm, a gunman opens fire on to the terrace of the popular La Bonne Biere bar, and when the police arrive, he has gone

That makes at least ten assailants in all, not seven.

So we are being asked to believe that, during Saturday night traffic in Paris with cops by now swarming everywhere, between two and four blokes have done four restaurants in three locations in just over ten minutes…at least two of them having taken three minutes at one hit.

Of these faster-than-sound travellers, three are neither shot nor suicided. The cars had Belgian plates, and later we hear that the chase has moved to Belgium itself. My estimate of the numbers involved is right, and the prosecutors are wrong: Belgian police arrest three people the next day in raids in a poor, immigrant quarter of Brussels – an Islamist bastion in France’s northern neighbour.

If you were European raised and planning a carefully timed multiple attack on Paris, would you take on board a foreign national with dodgy French at the last minute?

KNOWN ASSOCIATIONS

It was established early on that Islamic State (or ISIS or ISIL or whatever your brand name of choice) had claimed responsibility for the atrocities. The syntax of the announcement rings true, and nobody at ISIL is denying it. So let’s briefly analyse the controversial history of ISIL.

For much of its history, what is now ISIL was founded in 1999 as Daesh – a name associated with Recep Erdogan, who is widely acknowledged as a benefactor. Both the CIA and MI5 postively identified Daesh as closely linked to Al Q’aida – the organisation believed by the majority in the West to be the perpetrators of 9/11 – but the two Jihadist groups squabbled, and Daesh was reborn as ISIL led by al-Baghdadi. After the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, ISIS sent delegates into Syria in August 2011, and was heavily (albeit covertly) supported by Recep Erdogan – a NATO member. During the Greek and Cypriot financial crises, the US has consistently supported the territorial claims of Turkey against those two EU members.

The USA was, of course, a NATO founder. Former US airman, Presidential candidate and Pentagon lobbyist John McCain was photographed in friendly discussions with the Syrian anti-Assad rebels in May 2013:

The gentleman arrowed there is al Baghdadi, the then leader of ISIL. McCain wanted the White House to support ISIL; but then, being a weapons lobbyist, he would say that.

A full and evidenced description of McCain’s black ops involvement in Iraq and Syria was posted by The Slog 15 months ago.  Soon afterwards, ISIL suddenly and miraculously emerged as a fabulously wealthy Islamist player – allegedly based on selling oil from the fields it had equally rapidly captured. This was a line put out by US business media, but it didn’t bear much examination: the group lacks either the skills or contacts to pull off such a stunt in such a short time.

A key determinant of ISIL’s importance to NATO is that it has wound up occupying that territory vital for control of the US-backed Syria/Iraq oil pipeline route. Informed observers do not believe this was an accident: covert NATO/CIA support, they say, has been given to ISIL as an insurance against a Russian-controlled Syria cutting the West off from access to it via the Qatar port. This is accepted by Putin’s security services as a fact, and confirmed by at least one western intelligence agency. The support was given to ISIS with the intimate cooperation (and money) of the Saudis – to knock Russia out of the market, and then raise prices. It explains the venom with which, given even the smallest opening, Putin’s jets went first and foremost out for ISIL – producing massive US whingeing – and annihilated much of its infrastructure in thirteen days of bombing.

I draw two conclusions: first, ISIL is desperate to show that its balls have not been chopped off; and second, two NATO members – the US and Turkey – are implicated in the growth of ISIL.

MOTIVE & APERTURE

The UK’s Telegraph is a known haunt of seeded Western security service messages. MI5’s route into the paper is regularly used via at least one cypher. This is what the Telegraph noted yesterday:

‘Battle-hardened fighters now flowing in from Syria and Iraq are creating a perfect storm of terror that is in danger of defeating the French security services.’

If ever there was a resounding attempt at a wake-up call, then that’s the one. MI5 is also very pro the UK staying in the EU….as indeed is the US. But the EU is in deep doodoo at the moment on one momentous and game-changing issue: the Syrian migrant/refugee fiasco. If the borderless EU as we know it collapses over this issue – and there is every sign that it will – then the US will lose its battering ram so clumsily applied to the Ukraine situation (and ClubMed) over the last three years. Furthermore, if Britain leaves the EU – and the pollsters at the minute are saying the Leave camp has a 6-point lead – then Washington will be left with no ally and no battering ram when it comes to concerted anti-Putin actions.

The State department’s mainland ally – a Germany run by Merkel – has the biggest migrant problem of all, and the Chancellor in Berlin knows she could fall on the issue. She and other European leaders are engaged in desperate negotiations with the migratory sources to stop it – in fact, reverse it. They’re not going well: both Erdogan and Black Africa have cold-shouldered the idea of reversing refugee intake….and one east-European member after another has defied the free movement directive with barbed wire and walls.

Not only do the EC and Germany need a draconian excuse to deport migrants, if that were to be facilitated then a dimension of support for UKIP/Vote Leave would wane significantly. Britain would stay in, the EU would survive, and Merkel would remain in power.

Until this weekend, Hollande had been an exponent sans pareil of open borders – with a massive Muslim minority. Now he isn’t.

CONCLUSIONS

Were this a civilan police enquiry, the Number One suspect would be, with doubt, ISIL via cells it already has established in two Francophone countries of Europe.

Extreme doubt – given the nature and nationality of the assailants – would be expressed about the suggestion that Syrian migrants arriving as disguised refugees had carried out – indeed, even been involved in – the operation.

It would be noted that the only suspects with something to gain from that suggestion were the EU, Germany, and by implication the US and the British Conservative Government.

Finally, surveillance would be maintained upon the alleged channelling of money and arms to ISIL via Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the US arms industry and Senator McCain.

As a postscript to the investigation report, one suspects that the CIO would allow herself to suggest that the most likely ‘truth’ behind the Paris attacks, in terms of participation, was a joint op funded by NATO and carried out by indigenous European Jihadist supporters of ISIL. But that, in the absence of other than circumstantial evidence, it would be listed for the time being as straightforward terrorism.