Paris Attacks: Who Is Omar Ismail Mostefai, The Gunman Identified | News World India

As French police identify one of the gunmen who blew himself up at the Bataclan concert hall, killing 89 people, as 29-year-old Paris native Omar Ismail Mostefai, questions have risen about his background.

Mostefai, whose identity was confirmed using a severed fingertip, was known as being close to radical Islam, but had never been linked to terrorism.

Omar Ismail Mostefai was a 29-year-old man of Algerian origin.

According to reports, Mostefai’s former home and birthplace in the poor southern Parisian suburb of Courcouronnes, was searched on Saturday.

Jean-Pierre Georges, a French MP, said the alleged terrorist also lived in Chartres, in south-west Paris, until 2012.

Mostefai drove to the theatre on Friday in a black or grey Volkswagen Polo registered in Belgium. The other two gunmen involved in the attack on the venue are yet to be identified.

His father and 34-year-old brother have been taken into custody by police and a source close to the probe said investigators are now searching the homes of other friends and relatives of the killer.

Police said the attackers appeared to be “seasoned, at first sight, and well trained” and were investigating whether they had ever been to fight in Syria, where IS has proclaimed a caliphate along with territory in neighbouring Iraq.

(With agencies input)