Brahim Abdeslam

Brahim Abdeslam seemed no different from his peers in Molenbeek, one of Belgium’s poorest districts, where drug use is rife and many of the young men are unemployed. One November evening, he passed the time smoking pot in a parked car with two of his friends.

French police hunted Tuesday for a 2nd terrorist believed to have escaped after the bomb and gun massacres in Paris, while a U.S. official revealed that the suspected mastermind was part of an Islamic State cell that American intelligence agencies had been tracking for months.