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 The assailant may also have reached Paris faster and more easily
than expected because asylum seekers were rushed across some
national borders at the height of the migration crisis in Europe
this year to avoid bottlenecks after Hungary closed its borders,
ironically to keep out suspected militants.
The man, who blew himself up near the Stade de France stadium in
Friday's attacks that killed 129 people, has been identified from a
Syrian passport found near his body as 25-year-old Ahmad al-Mohammad
from the northwestern city of Idlib.
The true identity of the attacker has become a key line of inquiry
for French investigators, with the focus on whether the passport is
genuine, sources close to the investigation say.
Despite media reports that it may be counterfeit, investigators are
also looking at the possibility that it is genuine - but could have
been stolen or bought from a refugee after he made his way into
Europe and subsequently used by the attacker, they say.
 The passport's holder was registered as arriving alongside 198
refugees by boat from Turkey on Oct. 3 in Leros, a small picturesque
Greek island.
French authorities have said the fingerprints of the attacker who
blew himself up matched those of the man who landed on Leros.
Greek officials said on Sunday that Mohammad seemed not to be
traveling with anyone specific, despite arriving with others. But a
counter-intelligence source in Macedonia, one of the countries he
passed through, spoke of a "massive investigation in the Balkans
about the route of two of the terrorists".
The source, who declined to be named, indicated to Reuters that
Macedonia was coordinating its action with Greece, and that a
companion was with Mohammad by the time they bought ferry tickets
taking them to Piraeus on the Greek mainland.
A Leros travel agent said that on Oct. 4 he issued two tickets
costing 51.50 euros ($54.90) each to the men for a ferry departing
the following night from the nearby island of Kalymnos, which is
reached from Leros by a local service. The 23:10 sailing reached
Piraeus on the morning of Oct. 6.
The owner of the Kastis travel agency in Leros, 42-year-old Dimitris
Kastis, remembers selling tickets to Mohammad and a man who was with
him. "He didn't do or say anything that caught my attention," Kastis
said, adding that both men had paid in cash. He said the man
traveling with him had a similar surname.
Greek media have published a photograph of the second man's ticket
which gives his family name as al-Mahmod, and the initial of his
given name as M.
Kastis said he recognized this as the name the second man provided
when purchasing the ticket.
A Croatian police official, who declined to be named, also told
Reuters that an investigation was under way into Mohammed's journey
which was focusing on whether he was traveling with anyone and, if
so, with whom.
BALKAN ROUTE
In Leros, Mohammad was registered as required under European Union
rules, with his fingerprints recorded in a European database known
as Eurodac. Because his passport looked authentic and there was no
police record on him, he was given a permit allowing him to stay in
Greece for six months.
A copy of Mohammad's permit was distributed to journalists by
Immigration Minister Yannis Mouzalas. Written in Greek only, it
states that its holder should not leave the city of Corinth for the
whole period without alerting police.
But within days, Mohammad had gone at least as far as Croatia.
The counter-intelligence source in Macedonia said Mohammad was still
traveling with a companion two days after reaching Piraeus. They
registered together at a refugee camp in the backyard of an old
tobacco plant in the Serbian town of Presevo, though Serbian
officials have not mentioned an accomplice.
Mohammad then went on to Croatia, either by train or bus, and was
registered on Oct. 8 at the Opatovac refugee camp.
Reuters has been unable to determine what route Mohammad took after
this, or whether he was accompanied by anyone.
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Croatian police said he almost certainly left for Hungary within 24
hours, though Budapest has no record of him entering from Croatia,
which at the time was offloading thousands of migrants every day
across its northern border with Hungary.
Mohammad's most likely destination from Hungary would have been
Austria. In early October migrants were being sent in trains with
locked doors to Hegyeshalom on the Austrian border, where Reuters
journalists said they were ushered into the country without having
their documents checked.
Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said it
was "conjecture and speculation" that a man going by the name of
al-Mohammad had passed through Austria which, like France, is part
of the EU's Schengen zone where routine internal border controls
have been removed.
But Vienna has confirmed that another of the attackers, Belgian-born
Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, entered Austria from Germany on Sept. 9.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told reporters on
Tuesday that Budapest had no information as to whether Mohammad
traversed Hungary. At that time Hungary was not registering migrants
because Croatia had already done so.
Both countries are EU members but, unlike Croatia, Hungary is in the
Schengen zone and had sealed its frontier with Serbia to migrants on
Sept. 15.
This forced the migrants into Croatia, which infuriated Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orban by busing them north across its own
border with Hungary, in many cases without checks.
ORBAN'S TOUGH STANCE
The irony of an Islamist militant moving quickly through the Balkans
into western Europe and the heart of the 28-nation EU will not be
lost on Hungary, where Orban based his tough stance on the flow of
migrants on concerns that many were immigrants rather than refugees
fleeing poverty or war, and that some could be "terrorists".
The issue is also sensitive in Germany, where Chancellor Angela
Merkel has been criticized for her welcoming policy on refugees.
And some far-right and populist leaders have seized on the
possibility that any of the eight Paris attackers reached Western
Europe by posing as a migrant, using it to step up their
anti-immigration message.
Any security lapses are also a potential embarrassment for the
countries Mohammad passed through, but authorities say the influx of
migrants in recent months has made it almost impossible for them to
keep out would-be attackers.
"We take fingerprints, but how do we check them? Against which
database? If there's nothing on that person in the information we
received or if he's not wanted by Interpol he can go ... He could be
a shaven Osama bin Laden for all we know," said a senior Serbian law
enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou and Sylvia Aloisi in Athens,
Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Ivana Sekularac in Presevo, Serbia,
Marton Dunai in Budapest, Igor Ilic in Zagreb, Kole Casule in
Skopje, Francois Murphy in Vienna, John Irish in Paris and Mark
Hosenball in New York, Writing by Timothy Heritage, editing by David
Stamp and Pravin Char)
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