[4] Prior to the Paris attacks, there was an international arrest warrant issued for Abaaoud for his activities in recruiting individuals to Islamic terrorism in Syria.

[18] On 24 January 2018 during the trial of Jawad Bendaoud, the president of the court Isabelle Prévost-Desprez announced the death of Younes in an Iraqi-Syrian zone.

[23] In 2014, independent journalists Étienne Huver and Guillaume Lhotellier visited the Syria–Turkey border, where they obtained photos and video of Abaaoud's time in Syria.

In an interview with Dabiq, the magazine of the Islamic State (IS), Abaaoud bragged on social media about going to Belgium to lead the cell but escaped back to Syria, even being stopped by a police officer who compared him to a photo but did not identify him.

[18] In an interview with Dabiq magazine published February 2015, Abaaoud was reported to have made comments of his intention to fight persons of the Western world which he identifies as "the crusaders".

[36][37] The police were aware that Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a suspect in a drug ring investigation during which her telephone was tapped, also of Moroccan origin, was an associate of Abaaoud.

[citation needed] The prosecutor's office said that Abaaoud's body was found in the apartment that had been targeted in the raid and that the identification was made using skin samples, according to some published reports.

[40] However, other reports referred to identification by fingerprint samples taken from Abaaoud's mutilated body[41] which had been riddled with bullets and bits of shrapnel from a grenade explosion.

[43] The French prosecutor also stated on 24 November that Abaaoud was planning another attack in La Défense, a major business district in the Paris Metropolitan Area.

[48] Abaaoud was thought by counter-terrorism officials to have been close to Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi, and the link between IS leadership in Syria and terror cells operating in Europe.

[49] On 5 December, officials confirmed Abaaoud had two connections living in the Bordesley Green and Alum Rock areas of Birmingham, England.