Terrorists headed to Amsterdam same day as Paris attacks: Le Monde

French paper Le Monde says that two terrorists were on their way to the Netherlands on November 13, possibly to carry out an attack at Schiphol airport. That is the same day terrorists killed 130 people in a string of attacks across the French capital.

Le Monde bases its report on information found by the French authorities on a laptop belonging to one of the terrorists.

A spokesman for the Dutch public prosecution service told broadcaster NOS that the story is ‘known to them’ but has not led to an investigation because it is not ‘concrete enough’. ‘Schiphol and Amsterdam are sometimes mentioned in terrorism investigations, for example as meeting places,’ the spokesman said.

Le Monde names the two men as Soefien A en Osama K, and says they were heading to the Netherlands with false papers on a Eurolines bus. They returned for an unknown reason and it is unclear if they had been in Amsterdam.

Arrested

Soefien A was arrested in Molenbeek in March and Osama K in April in Anderlecht. K was picked up with Mohamed Abrini, better known as the man with the hat from the Zaventum airport attacks.

CNN reported earlier that IS had plans to attack Schiphol and the airport was on a high security alert over the summer.

NOS correspondent Henrik-Willem Hofs says the laptop was found in a waste bin and had a considerable amount of information including ‘wills, targets, instructions to make bombs and five files which named individuals to carry out attacks.

The file named 13 November had five sub-files, one of which was named Schiphol. Other names referred to the four locations of the Paris attacks, Hofs said.