The suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks was questioned by German police at Cologne-Bonn airport early last year before he boarded a plane to Istanbul, Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday, quoting security officials.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian killed in a police raid in the French capital on Wednesday, told German police on January 20th, 2014, he wanted to visit family and friends in the Turkish city and would return to Europe, Spiegel said.
The German interior ministry had no immediate comment.
Abaaoud had boasted in an online English-language magazine produced by Islamic State about the ease with which he could move between Syria and Belgium and the rest of Europe.
The Austrian interior ministry said that a claim in Thursday’s Spiegel report that Abaaoud had crossed from Germany into Austria on September 9th, 2015 was untrue.
A spokesman said the man who crossed the border with two other suspected militants was Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks who remains at large.
– (Reuters)