Ibrahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up outside the Comptoir Voltaire café on Friday night during a terrorist rampage, enjoyed activities banned under Islamic law. Brahim Abdeslam's journey from barkeeper to suicide bomber remains a mystery, along with the whereabouts of his younger brother Salah, now on the run as Europe's most wanted man but until recently the manager of Brahim's bar, Les Beguines. The requirement to close came into force last week but locals said Ibrahim had sold the bar after the police raid, and made “a lot of money”. "They were regular guys, who enjoyed a laugh," he said, still wearing his workclothes and a Nike baseball cap. No one thought it was possible that it was them. " I used to go there every day after work, on my way home. I used to play cards with Salah too, he was often at the cafe. “Now I am scared because I talked to them, I know them. "STRONG SMELL OF DRUGS" 
 
 What is clear is that the bar the brothers ran had annoyed some of its neighbors and, in August, been raided by police. A police raid in August found the bar was “used for the consumption of illegal hallucinogenic substances and had a strong smell of drugs and half smoked joints at the tables,” according to the closure order posted on the front door. The notice ordered a five-month closure from Nov. 5, and said police found "a strong smell of drugs" and ashtrays containing "partially smoked joints", while a number of customers were found to be carrying drugs on their persons. Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, this week vowed to “clean up” the area, saying that the government had lost control of it. Legal documents reviewed by Reuters and first reported by Belgian newspaper L'Echo show that Brahim, a French citizen born in Brussels, formed a company in March 2013 to run the bar. His brother Salah is now subject to an international manhunt, while another sibling, Mohammed, has been interviewed by police before being released.
– Before they were suspects in the deadliest attack on French soil since WWII, brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam owned a bar called Les Beguines in Brussels, the Wall Street Journal reports. "I used to go there every day after work," a neighbor tells the Telegraph. "We would go there to smoke hashish, drink alcohol, no problem." A friend tells Reuters he would see the brothers at Les Beguines everyday. They would play cards and talk sports, he says. But Brahim and Salah sold the bar Sept. 30 for what locals say was "a lot of money," the Telegraph reports. Six weeks later, Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris cafe and Salah is on the run from a continent-wide manhunt. Authorities shut down Les Beguines, located in a heavily Muslim area of Brussels, on Nov. 5 after a police raid in August found patrons selling drugs and smoking marijuana, Reuters reports. And a neighbor tells the Journal the bar was "a rough hangout with regular fights and frequent visits by police." Brahim and Salah were reportedly known to police for drug violations despite the use of drugs—in addition to alcohol and tobacco—being banned in Islam. "The history of the two fits a pattern in which many Islamist terrorists in Europe have been radicalized from the ranks of petty criminals and drug users," the Journal states. And Reuters notes attacks are often carried out by people who were seemingly fully assimilated into the culture of Europe.