Two weeks ago, the mayor of Molenbeek ordered the closure
of a neighborhood bar where Brussels police had found young men dealing drugs
and smoking dope over the summer.
Last Friday, the
owner blew himself up at another laid-back corner cafe, this time in Paris, on
a mission of retribution from Islamic State.
Brahim
Abdeslam's journey from barkeeper to suicide bomber remains a mystery, along
with the whereabouts of his younger brother Salah, now on the run as Europe's
most wanted man but until recently the manager of Brahim's bar, Les Beguines.
The brothers sold
the business just six weeks ago.
There is a
seeming disconnect between the ownership by Muslims - whose religion forbids
the use of alcohol and tobacco - of a bar, where drugs were being dealt, on a
quiet street in the low-rent Brussels borough of Molenbeek who have become the
focus of a manhunt for violent Islamists with ties to Syria.
Yet time and
again, investigations after attacks like those that killed 129 people in Paris
have uncovered tales of workaday Arab immigrant lives, assimilated to the profane
daily cares and pleasures of European cities, that have turned, unseen to
family and friends, into explosions of pious, suicidal fanaticism.
"It's
shocking, especially when it's people you've hung out with," said
25-year-old Nabil, as he walked home from work to his apartment nearby, past
the cafe on rue des Beguines, now shuttered by court order, which Brahim
Abdeslam, 31, had owned.
"They were regular guys, who enjoyed a laugh," he
said, still wearing his workclothes and a Nike baseball cap. "There was
nothing radical about them. ... They were here just last week hanging out. ...
I think they were indoctrinated. ... There is some mastermind behind it
all."
"LIKE SYLVESTER STALLONE"
Hicham, also 25 and in blue tracksuit and sneakers, echoed
that view of Brahim and Salah: "They smoked. They didn't go to the mosque
or anything. We saw them every day at the cafe," he said. Brahim, with a
voice "like Sylvester Stallone," could, he conceded, at times be
"a bit crazy".
"We played cards. We talked about football," he
added. "We talked about the everyday. Nothing jihadist, not about
Islam."
Those sentiments were echoed by family including a third
brother, a local council employee, who was released on Monday after two days in
custody, and by former workmates of Salah at the tram repair shop - though the
latter told public radio that the "joker" Salah lost that job in 2011
for absenteeism.
Belgian media also reported that Salah spent time in jail
for robbery five years ago alongside another Molenbeek man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud,
28. French investigators believe Abaaoud may have ordered the Paris attacks
from Syria, where he has become an Internet propagandist for Islamic State
under the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Belgiki - the Belgian.
Belgian police could not confirm any previous record for
the brothers or whether they had been under surveillance.
"STRONG SMELL OF DRUGS"
What is clear is that the bar the brothers ran had annoyed
some of its neighbors and, in August, been raided by police.
Details posted on the door, on the ground floor of a
typical brick-built 19th-century townhouse and confirmed by police to Reuters,
stated: "The premises have been used for the consumption of banned
hallucinogenic substances."
The notice ordered a five-month closure from Nov. 5, and
said police found "a strong smell of drugs" and ashtrays containing
"partially smoked joints", while a number of customers were found to
be carrying drugs on their persons.
The notice said the manager had been given a chance, on
Sept. 4, to object. "But he did not reply to our invitation".
Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans has described Molenbeek
as a "breeding ground for radical violence", suffering from high
youth unemployment and overcrowding. Belgian ministers have promised to
"clean it up."
The Abdeslams do not appear to have figured among the
jobless. Legal documents reviewed by Reuters and first reported by Belgian
newspaper L'Echo show that Brahim, a French citizen born in Brussels, formed a
company in March 2013 to run the bar.
In December that year, Brahim stepped aside as manager of
the company in favor of Salah, but remained the main owner. Two other family
members held small stakes at various times.
On Sept. 30 this year, after the closure warning, the
family sold out to an individual who gave an address in southern Belgium. That
person could not be contacted by Reuters.
The documents listed both brothers' address as the family
home in a four-storey house facing Molenbeek town hall across a cobbled square.
There, Mohammed Abdeslam, the brother held by police, told reporters the family
were stunned by events.
"We've never had problems with the law," he said
on the doorstep. "My parents are in shock and can't quite take in what's
happened," he added, saying they had had no idea Brahim was going to Paris
on Friday or where Salah now was.
According to French police, Brahim detonated a suicide vest
at the Comptoir Voltaire, a cafe close to the Bataclan music hall where gunmen
killed 89. The explosion seriously wounded several other people.
Salah, police say, rented a Volkswagen car that was found
near the Bataclan with Belgian plates and he was later checked, but not
arrested, near the Belgian border, in a car with two others.
GIVING A FRIEND A RIDE
A lawyer for Mohammed, who works for the town hall, said
Mohammed was released because he had an alibi putting him in the French
northern border city of Lille, where he was helping renovate a bar.
Lawyers say the two men in the car with Salah when he was stopped
by French police early on Saturday near Cambrai are among three people in
Belgian custody. The lawyer for one, Mohamed Amri, said he had taken a call
from a friend saying he had broken down in Paris and drove south to fetch him.
Amri said he had known nothing of any involvement in the attacks.
Outside Les Beguines, just over a mile from Molenbeek town
hall, another acquaintance of the Abdeslam brothers, 23-year-old Amir, who
works installing shop tills, said a friend had called him on Friday night asking
him to drive the 280 km (180 miles) to Paris to pick up Salah. Amir told him he
could not go.
He was told Salah offered to pay the fuel costs, but Amir
did not want to run up such big mileage on his leased car. "It's
incredible," he said of the arrests of those who did drive Salah. "It
could have been me. ... I had no idea."
With television running hours of live coverage on Monday
from the armed police siege of a house in Molenbeek in the hunt for Salah, his
brother Mohammed stressed that Salah had been found guilty of nothing:
"But with things as tense as they are," he said, "we don't know
if he'll dare give himself up."
So what took Brahim from running a marijuana-scented beer
joint named for a mediaeval order of Christian lay nuns to blowing himself up
at a bar named for Voltaire, the 18th-century critic of religion?
His brother
Mohammed had seen "absolutely nothing". Brahim and Salah were, he
said, "two brothers who were totally normal"./by
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