Brussels Islamic State terror cell
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The Brussels ISIL terror cell were a group accused of involvement in large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 (130 killed) and Brussels in early 2016 (32 killed), as well as other attacks against European targets. The terror cell is connected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a jihadist terrorist organisation primarily based in Syria and Iraq and led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Oussama Atar
In November 2016, a Belgian-Moroccan jihadist operating in Syria known as Oussama Atarwas believed to have organised the deadly terrorist attacks on Paris and Brussels.
Atar was the head of an intelligence-gathering unit based in Raqqa while the Islamic State was at the height of power over its caliphate.
Intelligence teams believed to have identified him after searching for a man known as Abou Ahmad whose name emerged after the arrest of two men in Austria a few weeks after the attacks in Paris. The pair, an Algerian named Adel Haddadi and a Pakistani, were detained on the Greek island of Leros weeks earlier and were unable to travel to Paris with the two Iraqis who blew themselves up at the Stade de France in Paris. He has links to bombers who targeted Paris and Brussels and was the only man in intelligence teams investigation who was linked to both atrocities. He first traveled to Syria from Belgium in 2002 and then went back in 2004 before travelling to Iraq, where he was arrested for crossing the border illegally and jailed for 10 years in 2005. He was imprisoned in the famous Abu Ghraib prison, run by US forces. He returned to Belgium in 2012 but 7 years in jail had left him radicalized. Atar's younger brother Yassine was arrested around the time of the Brussels attacks and their mothers home has been raided several times.
He was killed in Syria 17 November 2017, though French authorities did not announce this publicly as this would acknowledge that assassinations outside the legal framework were used.
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