Paris terrorist was a Syrian refugee, says Greece government official

Koen Geens, the justice minister, said that the arrests were in response to the Paris attacks after a vehicle with a Belgian license plate was seen near the Bataclan concert hall.

Serbian authorities said on Sunday the same man had been registered at a border crossing from Macedonia into Serbia a few days later.

Migrants and refugees sit onboard a train heading towards Serbia, from the transit center for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, on Saturday, November 14, 2015.

Yet, spokeswoman Helena Biocic said Sunday the man was “not flagged as suspicious” and continued his journey towards Hungary and Austria. USA officials told CBS News that the passport didn’t have the correct numbers for a Syrian passport and that the picture didn’t match the name.

Fake Syrian passports are also bought by Syrians who have not been able to get documents due to the war.

French investigators are chasing down potential leads and questioning the relatives of a man identified as one of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks.

French judicial sources said the name was not known to French anti-terror services.

After a terrorist attack killed more than 120 people and injured hundreds more on Friday, France imposed border controls and authorities discovered a Syrian passport on one of the attackers.

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.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks on Saturday as French President Francois Hollande vowed a “merciless” response. Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, has warned against any “swift links” between the Paris attacks and Europe’s migrant crisis.

However, Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said it was only “conjecture and speculation” that the passport holder had passed through Austria.

The fake passports are reportedly relatively easy to obtain. “Any smart terrorist would have used the open door policy”. He was last recorded in Croatia later that month.

BuzzFeed reported previous year that smugglers admitted to sneaking ISIS operatives into Europe with groups of refugees.

Pope Francis had already thought about this possibility back in September. Authorities haven’t confirmed whether the asylum seeker and attacker were the same person. “But it is absolutely crystal clear that whether they are recent arrivals, whether they are second generation Parisians, the problem of Islamist extremism is severe”.

In the USA, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Middle Eastern refugees should be blocked from coming to this country, telling reporters “if I were one of the leaders of the global jihadist movement and I didn’t infiltrate that group of (asylum seekers) with my people, that would be nearly malpractice”, the Washington Post reported.

“To suddenly point the finger at migrants would be grossly unfair”, said Leonard Doyle, a Geneva-based spokesman for the worldwide Organization for Migration.

“We didn’t mark this person as a potential suspect”.