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11/19/15, "Some attackers used refugee crisis to 'slip into' France: PM," AFP, Paris
............
"Some of the suspects in the Paris attacks took advantage of Europe's
migrant crisis to "slip in" unnoticed, the French premier said Thursday,
warning the EU needed to "take responsibility" over border controls.
.............
Manuel Valls said the EU's cherished passport-free Schengen zone
would be in danger if the bloc did not improve border controls, after it
emerged the ringleader of the Paris attacks had managed to enter Europe
unnoticed.
................
It was confirmed on Thursday that Abdelhamid Abaaoud,
a Belgian of Moroccan origin linked to a series of extremist plots in
Europe over the past two years, had died in a police raid on an
apartment in northern Paris on Wednesday.
..............
As debate raged about
the failings that had let Abaaoud slip through the net, Valls urged
France's neighbours to "play their role properly", saying the whole
Schengen system would be "called into question... if Europe does not
take responsibility" for its borders.
...............
The Schengen system allows
passport-free travel between 26 countries but it has come under severe
strain this year as the continent struggles with its biggest migration
crisis since World War II.
...........
More than 800,000 migrants and refugees
have arrived this year and Valls said some of the Paris attackers had
turned the chaos to their advantage.
..............
"These individuals took
advantage of the refugee crisis... of the chaos, perhaps, for some of
them to slip in" to France, he said on the France 2 television station. "Others were in Belgium already. And others, I must remind you, were in France."
...........
Earlier,
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Paris had received "no
information" from other European countries about Abaaoud's arrival on
the continent, despite the fact he was a known jihadist and the subject
of an international arrest warrant.
............
Police sources said a tip-off
from Moroccan intelligence had helped track 28-year-old Abaaoud to the
building where he died on Wednesday along with a woman thought to be his
cousin, who detonated an explosives vest."
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