U.S.
Español
Arabic
(CNN)Dancing to their favorite rapper Lacrim, in a nightclub on Brussels chic Avenue Louise, this is a side of the Paris attackers that has never been seen before.
Brahim Abdeslam, clearly visible, with a cigarette in his hand, flirts with a blonde girl while his younger brother Salah, dressed in an orange sweatshirt, whoops along with the group in the background.
The date is February 8, 2015.
Just over eight months later, Brahim would blow himself up at a cafe in Paris's 11th arrondissement. His suicide was part of a deadly ISIS mission whose cell would kill 130 people and injure hundreds more. Salah would become the only known member of that cell to survive and go on the run.
Fast forward another year to March 2016 and Salah is captured in the Belgian capital, which itself is rocked by its own twin attacks, bringing the effects the Abdeslams' terror network right to heart of their home city -- a city where those who knew the brothers reflect on how so many of their inner circle could have been radicalized so quickly.
Two friends, who filmed the video as they partied with Salah and Brahim that February night, agreed to share their stories with CNN, under the condition we hide their identities and speak far away from their neighborhood of Molenbeek.
So we meet in a park downtown, moments from the scene of the atrocity at Maelbeek Metro station.
Assuming false names, Karim and Rachid say they remember Brahim being the more serious one, while Salah was funloving.
"They were nice people," said Rachid. "I suppose you could say they lived life to the full."
"I saw Salah joke, smoke, drink and play cards," says Karim.
"If anything, he liked women. He was something of a ladies man and I heard he had a girlfriend at one point."
Salah Abdeslam, left, and his older brother Brahim have been implicated in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November. Brahim was killed when he set off his suicide vest in a cafe. Salah was captured in Brussels on Friday, March 18. Stephen Moore, a former FBI special agent, said he is not surprised that so many terrorist cases involve brothers. Many FBI cases involved siblings, he said. "They'll support each other even when they're not ideologically sold on what you're believing in," Moore said. "They're following you, not an ideology."
Hide Caption
1 of 8
A pair of brothers -- Khalid El Bakraoui, left, and his older brother Brahim -- are among the five people who authorities say played a part in the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, March 22. They're not the only siblings who've been involved in a major terrorist attack. Two brothers sat side by side on the plane that slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Two brothers were involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. And authorities say two brothers were part of the same ISIS cell that wreaked carnage in Paris in November. What is it about brothers and terrorism?
Hide Caption
2 of 8
Said Kouachi, left, and his brother Cherif barged into the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charle Hebdo and shot down 12 people in January 2015. Both died in a shootout with police.
Hide Caption
3 of 8
Two radicalized brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in April 2013. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, right, was later killed in a gunbattle with police. Dzohkar, wearing the backward hat, was convicted on 30 criminal charges and sentenced to death. He is in prison awaiting appeals.
Hide Caption
4 of 8
Mohammed Merah, right, fatally shot seven people in and around Toulouse, France, in March 2012. He was killed in a shootout with police. Prosecutors said Mohamed's brother Abdelkader, left, helped plan the crimes; Abdelkader is now serving a prison sentence.
Hide Caption
5 of 8
Salem al-Hazmi, left, and his brother Nawaf were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Hide Caption
6 of 8
Waleed al-Shehri, left, and his younger brother, Wail, were aboard American Airlines Flight 11, sitting beside each other before they helped hijack the plane that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Hide Caption
7 of 8
Ali Ghufron, left, recruited his two younger brothers -- Amrozi, center, and Ali Imron -- to participate in the Bali, Indonesia, bombings in 2002. They detonated two bombs on the tourist island, killing 202 people from 21 different countries.
Hide Caption
8 of 8
Looking back, after that memorable night in February, Rachid says the brothers started to change.
"That was the last time I saw them drink," he says.
"Brahim started to become more religious. He would attend Friday prayers at the mosque but otherwise pray at home."
At the time, the friends said they had no idea that the two had embarked upon their journey toward radicalism.
"They must have been changing bit by bit."
Karim and Rachid say they do not espouse such views themselves, though a family member of Karim's was recently prevented by authorities from trying to join ISIS in Syria.
He was just 15 years old.
"It happened so quickly our family barely noticed," Karim says.
"Also so much of it goes on behind closed doors, on line, in their rooms."
'Like Family'
Unemployed, with eight months' jail time under his belt, Karim would spend his afternoons at the cafe Les Beguines, not far from his home, where he became close to its new owners - the Abdeslams - in 2011.
He says he and Rachid would smoke cannabis.
They'd play poker for money, peddle soft drugs, and watch the brothers' beloved football team - Real Madrid - on the TV, Brahim cheering on its star player Cristiano Ronaldo.
"It was a fun place. It felt like family," says Rachid.
Also part of that "family," three more men held in custody for allegedly helping Salah while he was on the run. A fugitive, Mohammed Abrini, and a second Paris suicide bomber illustrating the pervasive nature of ISIS's spread on one sleepy, residential street in a working class suburb of Brussels.
Khadija Zamouri was born in Molenbeek. She says people forget that the Muslim community is also a victim of the bombings.
Hide Caption
1 of 8
Like thousands of parents across the country, Jonathan Williams is struggling to find ways to explain to his young daughter what happened on Tuesday.
Hide Caption
2 of 8
Joelle Scott was in her office when the bomb went off. "I don't think it's finished. They're everywhere in every land," she says. "The politicians didn't do enough before -- and now it's too late."
Hide Caption
3 of 8
Nohaila, 21, was born and raised in Molenbeek. "Yesterday I was in the Place de la Bourse (where people gathered to mourn the victims) and a man spat on my foot. He said, 'Get out! Everything that has happened is because of you Muslims.'"
Hide Caption
4 of 8
Moumen Hamdouch, a French expat who has lived in the suburb of Ixelles for a decade, says he thinks the government needs to do a better job of unifying troubled communities.
Hide Caption
5 of 8
"I have a 7-year-old daughter named Acelya," Dogan says. "She's so young, she can't really feel the impact of what's happening. It was far from her school. I try not to tell her all about this monstrous world."
Hide Caption
6 of 8
Halima Abdelkader has known Salah Abdeslam since he was a little boy, she says. "I've known his family for decades. We started our families at the same time, and they're certainly not radical people."
Hide Caption
7 of 8
"Brussels is good -- or it was good before all of this," Jose, 40, says. "It's still good, but there are religious tensions now. Some neighborhoods aren't so easy for the police."
Hide Caption
8 of 8
Abrini, who allegedly drove with Abdeslam to Paris twice in the week of the attacks, still remains a wanted man. Rachid and Karim say he was a regular at the cafe. They say he used to visit in the evenings for a drink, and describe him as a tall, slim, quiet man who would keep to himself.
Belgian police have never questioned Rachid or Karim, even though Karim was with one of the suspects- Salah's alleged getaway driver - on the night he was asked to come fetch him from France.
Karim and Rachid claim that Hamza Attou, the driver, and his accomplice Mohammed Amri weren't aware of what they were getting themselves into.
When it comes to Salah though, they aren't so sure.
"I doubt he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Karim.
'Must have been drugged'
Looking back through his class photos, Karim shows me the face of a fellow pupil about 10 years old sitting on the row above him in the sports hall.
Behind his easy smile it's impossible to predict the boy - Chakib Akrouh - would go on to gun Parisians down alongside Brahim before blowing himself up as well.
"The last I heard he had gone to Syria, married there and had a little girl."
Karim says not only does he have a hard time understanding why his friends did what they did, but also how they did it, saying they must have been on drugs. "The only way I could do what they did was if I was completely drugged or drunk ... not in control of my senses," he says.
"Believe me madame," Rachid interjects. "No one's born bad like that."
In a way they too see themselves victims of ISIS' spread across their deprived suburb.
"It's very serious," says Rachid.
"As young Muslim men with few opportunities, things will get even worse for our kind from now on," adds Karim.
"Plus these days even we are scared of being blown to pieces in the subway."
