Salah Abdeslam – A link to Mozambique?

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Salah Abdeslam – A link to Mozambique?

1:01 CAT | 28 Mar 2016

AP / Salah Abdeslam

Belgian authorities last week arrested Salah Abdeslam, accused of being the ringleader of the Paris attacks that left 130 dead and over 350 injured in November 2015.

Pending Abdeslam’s deportation to France, authorities have been trying to establish the French-Algerian’s movements prior to the Paris attacks, and Mozambique has emerged as of the countries where he may have lived.

One line of research has Salah Abdslam living with four friends in an apartment above the Dolce Vita café on Maputo’s Avenida Julius Nyerere until June or July 2015. They would have been seen at this ‘café’ daily, drinking green tea and talking on Arab via Skype on their laptops, without any known occupation.

The March 25 edition of Mozambican weekly newspaper Savana says that three Dolce Vita employees recognized Salah Abdeslam when they saw a picture of him on television, shouting: “It is him!”.

However, writes Savana, whose reporter witnessed this episode live yet does not sign the report, the employees have now changed their minds and say they were mistaken.

“The person we thought we saw is still living here and was here at the bar this afternoon,” one of them later told the weekly newspaper.

But VOA sources who spoke to the Dolce Vita employees say there is contradictory information.

One employee could not confirm whether Salah Abdeslam rented the apartment above the café because, as she said, “they are all very similar,” referring to the fact that several people from the Muslim community have lived upstairs.

Another VOA correspondent said: “The waitresses clearly have orders to keep quiet.”

According to another rumour circulating last week, a ‘diplomatic source’ has allegedly revealed that Abdeslam and his friends lived in Maputo until June and July last year, and then left for Europe, one group via Johannesburg and another via Nairobi.

Interpol asks for an investigation…

VOA claims to have learned from ‘a source within the Mozambique intelligence services’ that Interpol has asked the Mozambican authorities to investigate whether Salah Abdeslam was in Maputo and what he was doing in the country.

The afore mentioned source did not give many details, and there is no official confirmation of Abdeslam’s presence in Mozambique.

Political observers have repeatedly said that Mozambique could be used as a base for Islamic radicals, who would easily go unnoticed in a country with a large, wealthy and influential Muslim community.

On December 25, 2015, two Mozambicans of Asian origin, Assane Momad and Abdul Ahmed, were arrested on the South African side of the Ressano Garcia border crossing with about US$7million in cash.

At the time, South African Hawks special police unit spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi admitted that the money could be for terrorist activities.

“Where and how they got this money is what we are trying to determine,” Mulaudzi said, quoted by the South African portal iol.co.za.

VOA reportedly spoke to several customers who frequent the place and writes that these “admit suspicious transactions,” along with some of the people who have placed comments on social networks, but refused to record interviews.

Source: VOA Portugues / Savana