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| Paris attacker named as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai as investigation continues – live updates | Paris attacker named as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai as investigation continues – live updates |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| 5.48am GMT05:48 | |
| Arrests in Belgium | |
| Belgian police have arrested several people over alleged links to the Paris attacks in a huge sweep, including one who was in the French capital at the time of the attacks, AFP reports. | |
| Justice minister Koen Geens said the arrests were in connection with a grey Polo that had been rented in Belgium that was found near the Bataclan concert hall. | |
| The arrests – local media said three people had been detained – took place in the Brussels district of Molenbeek that has been linked to several other terror plots in Europe. | |
| Police in Belgium – the European country with the highest proportion of citizens who have gone to fight for Isis – have opened a formal terrorism investigation. | |
| Paris prosecutor François Molins said one of the vehicles used in Friday’s attacks was registered in Belgium and hired by a French national living there. | |
| Witnesses in Paris said some attackers arrived in a car with Belgian plates. | |
| The Observer’s Daniel Boffey reports that Molenbeek “was casually described by one Belgian broadcaster as a ‘den of terrorists’, where returnees from Syria have in recent years often made their home”: | |
| Related: A discarded parking ticket in a car near the Bataclan leads detectives to Brussels | |
| 5.33am GMT05:33 | |
| Agence France-Presse has profiled the man identified by media reports – but, as yet, not officially confirmed – as one of the attackers: Omar Ismail Mostefai. | |
| Omar Ismail Mostefai was known to police as nothing more than a petty criminal before he became the first gunman identified from Friday’s attacks in Paris, which left at least 129 dead. | |
| Identified by his finger, which was found among the rubble of the Bataclan concert hall, the 29-year-old was one of three men who blew himself up killing 89 people in the bloodiest scene of the carnage. | |
| Born on 21 November 1985, in the poor Paris suburb of Courcouronnes, Mostefai’s criminal record shows eight convictions for petty crimes between 2004 and 2010, but no jail time. | |
| On Saturday Paris prosecutor François Molins said the man since named as Mostefai had been singled out as a high-priority target for radicalisation in 2010 but, before Friday, he had “never been implicated in an investigation or a terrorist association”. | |
| Investigators are now probing whether he took a trip to Syria last year, according to police sources. | |
| The killer’s father and 34-year-old brother were placed in custody on Saturday evening and their homes were searched. | |
| “It’s a crazy thing, it’s madness,” his brother told AFP before he was taken into custody. | |
| “Yesterday I was in Paris and I saw how this shit went down.” | |
| The brother, one of four boys in the family along with two sisters, turned himself in to police after learning Mostefai was involved in the attacks. | |
| While he had cut ties with Mostefai several years ago, and knew he had been involved in petty crimes, his brother said he had never imagined his brother could be radicalised. | |
| The last he knew, Mostefai had gone to Algeria with his family and his “little girl”, he said, adding: “It’s been a time since I have had any news.” | |
| “I called my mother, she didn’t seem to know anything,” he said Saturday. | |
| A source close to the enquiry said Mostefai regularly attended the mosque in Luce, close to Chartres, to the southwest of Paris. | |
| 5.16am GMT05:16 | 5.16am GMT05:16 |
| Opening summary | Opening summary |
| Claire Phipps | Claire Phipps |
| Welcome to continuing coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, as investigators build a picture of the attackers and their network, and we learn more about the victims. | Welcome to continuing coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, as investigators build a picture of the attackers and their network, and we learn more about the victims. |
| Here is what we now know: | Here is what we now know: |
| It’s crazy, insane. I was in Paris myself last night, I saw what a mess it was. | It’s crazy, insane. I was in Paris myself last night, I saw what a mess it was. |
| Updated at 5.20am GMT |