Senior European official: ISIS wants to hit UK; trail for Salah Abdeslam is cold

The trail for the eighth Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, has gone cold, a senior European counterterrorism official told CNN late Thursday, who also said intelligence indicates ISIS wishes to strike the United Kingdom as a followup to its recent attack in France. 

European security agencies have had no trace of Abdeslam since he was dropped off by a friend in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek on November 14, the day after the attacks. The official said late Thursday investigators now believe he developed cold feet about blowing himself up in Paris.

"He was freaking out, he was scared when he called his friends in Brussels to come and pick him up that night from Paris," the official told CNN.

The official said he believed ISIS might not welcome him back into the fold, even if he was able to reach Syria.

Meanwhile, intelligence obtained by European security agencies indicates that ISIS is aiming to attack the United Kingdom in a follow-up to its Paris operation, the official said. 

The intelligence suggests British ISIS fighters have been tasked by senior ISIS operatives in the so-called caliphate to return home and carry out an attack. 

It's not clear how imminent the threat is nor the specific location. However, the official said the concerns have been compounded by the vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday to authorize British airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.

The official did not say whether one factor in the intelligence warning was the arrest of a British ISIS operative linked to "Jihadi John" in Turkey in November. 

Aine Lesley Davis, a British ISIS operative, was arrested in Istanbul the same day as the Paris attacks as he planned to travel to Europe to deliver orders on planned terror attacks, a Turkish official told CNN last month. The information was first reported by the leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, whose account a Turkish official confirmed to CNN. 

Davis was arrested after Turkish intelligence worked with Britain's MI6 service to monitor the movements of a messenger linked to Jihadi John inside the Syrian city of Raqqa, Hurriyet said. 

Intelligence on possible locations in Syria for Davis' colleague, ISIS militant Jihadi John, were also shared by Turkish National Intelligence to the CIA and MI6. The airstrikes in Raqqa that U.S. officials say killed Jihadi John, real name Mohammed Emwazi, on November 12 followed hours later, the paper said.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE HOMEPAGE