Bomb maker hurt but alive

New information leads U.S. officials to believe that
French jihadist David Drugeon, a bomb maker in the al-
Qaeda affiliated Khorasan Group, survived U.S. strikes
last month, U.S. officials tell CNN.
CNN's reporting on Drugeon is the result of a
collaboration with the French newspaper L'Express.
Intelligence indicates Drugeon was seriously injured in the
drone strike on his vehicle in November and immediately
driven away for treatment at a location Jihadis felt was
secure, L'Express is reporting Wednesday.
The new information is based in part on monitoring of al
Qaeda and Khorasan communications, in additional to
human intelligence, the official said. Initial information after
the strikes in Idlib, Syria, led US intelligence to assess
that it was possible Drugeon was killed. But recent
intelligence changed that assessment.
CNN's reporting last month indicated Drugeon's knowledge
of explosives, European background and access to Western
fighters makes him arguably one of the most dangerous
operatives in the global al Qaeda network.
Drugeon was born in 1989 in a blue-collar and immigrant
neighborhood dotted with social housing on the outskirts of
Vannes on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, according to
Eric Pelletier a reporter with L'Express who has
extensively reported on Drugeon and shared his findings
with CNN.
By all accounts, Drugeon had a very normal childhood.
His father was a bus driver and his mother a secretary
and committed Catholic.
He had an elder brother who shared his passion for the
French soccer team Olympic Marseilles and he got good
grades at school. But like a significant number of others
who later took the path to radicalization, his parents'
divorce when he was 13 was traumatic.
Drugeon began acting out, and his grades at school
nosedived. He began hanging out with a group of young
Muslims in the neighborhood who espoused a fundamentalist
interpretation of Islam. Before he turned 14 he converted,
changing his name to Daoud.
By 2010, Drugeon was on the radar screen of French
security services and had made several trips to Egypt to
learn Arabic and more about Islam. He funded the trips by
taking driving jobs. In April that year, he slipped away
from France for good, traveling via Cairo for the tribal
areas of Pakistan, to join the jihad against U.S. forces in
Afghanistan.