France says it got tip about where mastermind of Paris attack was hiding

France’s interior minister says officials were told on Monday – three days after the deadly attacks that killed 129 people – that Belgian jihadi Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been spotted in Greece.

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday the tip came from a country “outside of Europe.”

Less than 48 hours later, Abaaoud was killed in a police raid in the suburb of Saint-Denis.

Abaaoud was wanted on international warrants and had been sentenced in absentia in Belgium to 20 years in prison, Cazeneuve said.

Among other things, Abaaoud had been linked to the April attack on a church in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif in which a person was killed, and to an attack by a gunman on a high-speed train that was thwarted by three young Americans.