‘LeT bomb-maker planned to join IS for Paris carnage’

A Pakistani LeT bomb-maker with a bent for accessing porn was part of the team of militants, who set out to execute the deadly Paris attacks, but could not reach in time to make it even more catastrophic, according to a media report.

The November 14 series of coordinated attacks by suicide bombers and gunmen, the deadliest inflicted on France since World War II, were a “slimmed-down version of an even more ambitious plan” to hit other European countries and following them up with strikes in several locations, a senior European counter-terrorism official told CNN.

Muhammad Usman, a suspected bomb-maker for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), had set out from the capital of the self-declared ISIS caliphate in Raqqa, Syria, six weeks before the Paris attacks along with Algerian-born Adel Haddadi, the report said, citing investigation documents.

The duo was part of a team of four militants, of whom the other two later blew themselves up outside the national stadium in Paris, killing nearly 130 people. The team posed as Syrian refugees, blending in with thousands fleeing the war-torn country and made the treacherous crossing from Turkey 

to Greece.