The missing Paris jihadist had a taste for gay sex, drugs and PlayStation.
As the international manhunt for 26-year-old Belgian Salah Abdeslam continued, patrons of a gay bar in Brussels told The Sunday Times of London that he was a regular there — known for boozing, smoking hash and flirting with other men.
“We had him down as a rent boy,” a bartender named Julien said of Abdeslam, who’s been on the run since the Nov. 13 attacks on Paris.
Others said he was known for long days playing video games in the bar owned by his killed terrorist brother Brahim in the poor Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.
The brothers’ tastes would appear to make them unlikely ISIS extremists. The terror group brutally punishes homosexuality — often hurling gay men off buildings or stoning them to death — and alcohol or drug use.
Friends of Abdeslam say the fugitive has Skyped them in recent days, according to the Daily Mail. His brother, Mohammed, told reporters that he believes Salah “is not far away” — sparking suspicion he may be holed up in Belgium’s capital.
Brussels went into lockdown Saturday — shuttering its metro system, canceling concerts, postponing soccer games and telling locals to stay out of crowds amid fears of a “serious and imminent” terror attack.
“We are talking about the threat that several individuals with arms and explosives would launch an attack perhaps in several locations at the same time,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said.
Investigators are still trying to untangle Abdeslam’s role in the carnage in Paris, where 130 were killed and 350 injured. He and Brahim joined in the carefully planned assaults on restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium with at least six other extremists.
Abdeslam may have rented two of the three cars used in the attacks, French police say, but they don’t know if he acted as a driver or as a shooter. They believe he abandoned a car in a Paris suburb. He was picked up early the next morning and driven back to Brussels by two accomplices now in custody.
Officials stopped the car at the border and questioned the men, but let them go. Abdeslam disappeared once he reached Brussels.
The attorney for one of the accomplices said Abdeslam was wearing “a big jacket, maybe a bomb belt” and behaved nervously, making authorities suspect he had backed out of his murderous assignment in Paris.
Meanwhile, a Moroccan-born Belgian who may have scouted the Paris targets was arrested in Turkey as he tried to flee to Syria, authorities said. Ahmad Dahmani, 26, was collared Saturday with two other suspects.
Investigators tracing the jihadist networks that inspired the terrorists said Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris ringleader who was killed in a police raid last week, is connected to the group Sharia4Belgium, known to have sent at least 50 Belgians to join ISIS forces in Syria.