عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

Fall of Raqqa, Mosul Kindles Hopes of Finding Some Paris, Brussels Attacks Ringleaders

Damage is seen inside the departure terminal following the March 22, 2016 bombing at the Brussels airport. Reuters photo
Damage is seen inside the departure terminal following the March 22, 2016 bombing at the Brussels airport. Reuters photo
TT
20
TT

Fall of Raqqa, Mosul Kindles Hopes of Finding Some Paris, Brussels Attacks Ringleaders

Damage is seen inside the departure terminal following the March 22, 2016 bombing at the Brussels airport. Reuters photo
Damage is seen inside the departure terminal following the March 22, 2016 bombing at the Brussels airport. Reuters photo

For French and Belgian investigators, the fall of ISIS group's strongholds in Syria and Iraq kindles hopes of ensnaring some of the ringleaders of the 2015-16 terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, Agence France Presse reported.

Among the most wanted ISIS figures sought for their suspected involvement in the slaughter, three are at the top of the list -- though their whereabouts are unknown and they may even have been killed in the offensives to free the ISIS strongholds of Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul in Iraq.

Belgian and Moroccan national Oussama Atar, 32, is a veteran militant who spent seven years in various US prisons in Iraq where he is thought to have been radicalized, AFP said.

Investigators suspect him of masterminding the attacks that claimed 130 lives in Paris in November 2015 and left 32 dead in Brussels in March last year.

Belgian police found a computer near a hideout used by the Brussels attackers containing evidence that they were in close contact with Atar, who was based in Raqqa at the time.

An Algerian arrested in late 2015 in Austria as he returned from Syria identified Atar from a photograph as the man who ordered the attacks.

The United States placed Atar, whose nom de guerre was Abu Ahmed, on a list of "specially designated global terrorists" in June this year, describing him as a "leading coordinator" of the attacks in Europe, AFP said.

According to the European arrest warrant for Atar, he is the uncle of Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, brothers who blew themselves up in the Brussels attacks of March 22, 2016, one at the airport and the other in the metro.

Ahmad Alkhald, thought to be an alias, is a 25-year-old Syrian from Aleppo who is suspected of making the bombs and suicide belts used in the Paris and Brussels attacks, AFP said.

His other aliases include Yassine Noure and Mohammed Alqhadi.

His DNA was found on a suicide vest worn by one of the assailants who blew themselves up outside Paris' Stade de France stadium on November 13, 2015, when a string of restaurants and bars in the French capital also came under attack. 

Investigators have established that Alkhald arrived in Europe via the Greek island of Leros posing as a migrant in September 2015, then returned to Syria two weeks before the Paris attacks. 

According to the news agency, he is also on the US list of "global terrorists", described as the "explosives chief" of the Paris and Brussels attacks.

Abdelilah Himich, 27, is a Franco-Moroccan who served in France's Foreign Legion in Afghanistan before deserting from the prestigious force in 2010.

Nicknamed "Abdel the Legionnaire" as well as Abu Sulayman al-Faransi ("the Frenchman"), he is also on the US terror watchlist, described as a "senior foreign terrorist fighter and external operations figure,” AFP said.

Washington says he created "a European foreign terrorist fighter cell" with up to 300 members at its height that carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria as well as planning the Paris and Brussels attacks.

Born in Morocco, he grew up in the small town of Lunel near Montpellier in southern France, which became a breeding ground for militants, AFP added.

Most Viewed

 
Features

The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
TT
20
TT

The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump attends a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., US, June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Call it the 911 presidency.
Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors.
Whether it’s leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion.
An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump’s 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.
The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress’ authority and advance his agenda.
“What’s notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,” said Ilya Somin, who is representing five US businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it.
Growing concerns over actions
The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump’s strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there’s growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the US is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address.
“The temptation is clear,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. “What’s remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we’re in a different era now.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy.
“It’s the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,” Bacon said of Congress’ power over trade. “And I get the emergency powers, but I think it’s being abused. When you’re trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that’s policy, not emergency action.”
The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority.
“President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden — wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump frequently sites 1977 law to justify actions
Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports.
The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces “an unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad “to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”
In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on US soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the US economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion.
Congress has ceded its power to the presidency
Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers — including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited — that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The US Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals.
Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II.
Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump’s eventual veto.
“Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges,” said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. “Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act.”
Trump, Yoo said, “has just elevated it to another level.”
Trump's allies support his moves
Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump’s actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy.
“We believe — and we’re right — that we are in an emergency,” Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax.
“You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies,” Vance said. “I’m not talking about toys, plastic toys. I’m talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I’m talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain.”
Vance continued, “These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency.”
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president’s emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance.
Similar legislation hasn’t been introduced since Trump’s return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency.
“He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there’s oversight and safeguards,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a “path toward autocracy and suppression.”