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Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, on the run since November, has been wounded and arrested in a dramatic raid in Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said another man arrested, Monir Ahmed Al Hadj, was on a wanted list. Three members of a family accused of harbouring Abdeslam have also been detained. French President Francois Hollande said he expected Abdeslam to be extradited to France "as rapidly as possible". The raid in the district of Molenbeek came after Abdeslam's fingerprints were found in a flat in another Brussels district, which was raided on Tuesday.
Abdeslam, who has been at large since the attacks on 13 November, was wounded in the leg as police moved in. Dramatic footage showed him being bundled into a police car after a volley of gunfire. One of Europe's most wanted men, Abdeslam is a key suspect in the jihadist attacks in Paris in which 130 people died. The French president said Abdeslam's arrest was an "important moment" but added that it was not the "final conclusion". "We must catch all those who allowed, organised or facilitated these attacks and we realise that they are a lot more numerous than we thought earlier and had identified," he said. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the raid had come after "intense" detective work and said it was a "very important result in the battle for democracy".
Accomplices
Prosecutors said the second wanted man arrested in Molenbeek, Monir Ahmed Al Hadj, had travelled with Abdeslam to Germany last October, where his fingerprints were taken during an identity check. A false Syrian passport in Al Hadj's name and Belgian identity papers under an alias he used were found in a flat in the southern suburb of Forest that was raided on Tuesday. Abdeslam's fingerprints were also found in the Forest flat. One man - identified as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid and linked to the Paris attacks - was shot dead in Tuesday's raid. Officials said at the time they believed as many as two other suspects may have escaped.
Belkaid is believed to have used a false ID in the name of Samir Bouzid, while crossing the border between Austria and Hungary with Abdeslam and another man last September, the Belgian prosecutor's office said. The false ID was also used four days after the Paris attacks at a Western Union office in Brussels to transfer money to Hasna Aitboulahcen. Belgian prosecutors say she was the niece of the suspected Paris ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Both Abaaoud and Aitboulahcen died during a police raid on a flat in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on 18 November. Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national born in Brussels, had lived in Molenbeek before the Paris attacks.
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[/B]Hours later, the French president said more people were involved in the attacks than previously thought and predicted more arrests would follow. Salah Abdeslam, 26, is a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks and is suspected of driving a car carrying a group of gunmen who took part in the shootings. After the bloodbath, he slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels and eluded capture for four months, despite being the target of an international manhunt. He was believed to have slipped through police fingers at least once, possibly twice. Belgian authorities locked down their capital for several days but failed to find him.
His capture brought instant relief to police and ordinary people in France and Belgium who had been looking over their shoulder for Abdeslam since Nov. 13, when Islamic extremist attackers fanned out across the French capital and killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes. It was France's deadliest attack in decades. Abdeslam and four other suspects were detained in the raid, including three members of a family that sheltered him. Abdeslam was shot in the leg, officials said.
France's BFM television broadcast images of police tugging a man with a white hooded sweatshirt toward a police car, as he dragged his left leg as if it were injured. Abdeslam was not armed but did not immediately obey orders when confronted by police, prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said. It was possible that Abdeslam had spent days, weeks or months in the apartment, according to Van der Sypt, who said the investigation would continue day and night.
French President Francois Hollande said authorities will need to detain anyone who aided the attacks in any way. He said those people are much more numerous than authorities had believed and that the French government would seek to have Abdeslam extradited. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called Friday's arrests a success in the "fight against terrorism." President Barack Obama congratulated the leaders of Belgium and France over the arrest, in phone calls with both men, the White House said in a statement.
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Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last year's Paris attacks who was arrested in Belgium last week, is "worth his weight in gold" to investigators, his lawyer has said. "He is collaborating... He is not maintaining his right to remain silent," said lawyer Sven Mary. Abdeslam was captured in a raid on an apartment in Brussels and is being interrogated by police. He is the only surviving participant in the attacks in police custody. However, Mr Mary denied media reports that Abdeslam, 26, would become an informer in return for more lenient treatment. Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national dubbed Europe's most-wanted fugitive, is now fighting extradition to France.
In other developments:
* French President Francois Hollande has met relatives of some of the 130 people killed in the 13 November attacks
* Belgium's federal prosecutor said the authorities had made progress but were "still far from solving the puzzle" of the Paris attacks
* Belgian prosecutors say that DNA evidence had identified one of Abdeslam's accomplices as Najim Laachraoui, 24, who is still on the run.
Abdeslam's lawyer has previously threatened to sue French investigator Francois Molins for telling journalists that Abdeslam had wanted to blow himself up along with other attackers but he changed his mind. Mr Mary said this was a violation of judicial confidentiality. Mr Molins said he had the right to reveal the investigation's progress in an "objective" manner. Mr Mary also said his client would continue to fight a transfer to France, but added: "Let's be quite clear. He's going to France - there is no single reason that he won't go to France. It'll be the investigating judge who decides when he goes." French president Francois Hollande has said that the number of people involved in the terrorist network is much larger than originally thought and that he wants Abdeslam transferred to France as soon as possible to face prosecution.
Belgian prosecutors said that Abdeslam had travelled twice to the Hungarian capital Budapest, using a rental car last September. In the car were two other men, using fake Belgian identity cards with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal. Soufiane Kayal has now been identified as Laachraoui from DNA found at houses in the town of Auvelais and the Brussels district of Schaerbeek. "The investigation showed that Soufiane Kayal can be identified as Najim Laachraoui, born on 18 May 1991 and who travelled to Syria in February 2013," the statement said. Belgian police said Samir Bouzid was "most probably" Mohamed Belkaid. He was killed by a police sniper in a raid on a flat outside Brussels on 15 March. The prosecutor appealed for public help in finding Laachraoui. Also still being sought is Mohamed Abrini, who was filmed at petrol stations with Abdeslam two days before the Paris attacks.
'Stunned'
The transfer took place early on Wednesday morning from the Beveren prison at the request of the French authorities, after the Belgian judiciary agreed in late March to extradite the alleged mastermind behind the attacks, EFE news reported.
Abdeslam wore an explosives belt on the night of the massacres, but said he "voluntarily" decided not to detonate it.
The jihadi attacks in the French capital last November 13 happened outside a soccer stadium and at cafes and a concert, leaving 130 dead.
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam transferred to France
Salah Abdeslam was whisked in secretly by helicopter after being transferred from the prison cell in Belgium where he had been held since his capture last month. His lawyer, Frank Berton, described a “muscular operation” that had caught even the attorney by surprise, causing him to rush to join his client at Paris’ Palace of Justice. The 26-year-old faces preliminary charges of participating in a terrorist organization, terrorist murders and attempted murders, attempted terrorist murders of public officials, hostage-taking, and possessing weapons and explosives, French prosecutors said in a statement.
Berton said Abdeslam was being sent to Fleury-Merogis, a massive, high-security prison about 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Paris, where he will be held in isolation in a special camera-equipped cell until his next hearing on May 20. French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said earlier that Abdeslam would be placed in isolation, watched by guards specially trained to deal with “people reputed to be dangerous.” The return of the last known survivor of the team that carried out the Nov. 13 attacks may help investigators untangle some of the still-unresolved questions about the assault, which claimed 130 lives at cafes, a music hall and a sports stadium. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the carnage.
Berton told reporters Wednesday that his client “volunteered that he would explain himself at some later date.” Abdeslam, a French citizen of Moroccan origin, spent four months on the run following the attacks and a month in Belgian custody after being tackled by heavily armed police outside his hideout in the Mollenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels. Abdeslam’s precise role in the attacks has never been clear. The Paris prosecutor said he was kitted out as a suicide bomber, but abandoned his plans and fled to Belgium. Abdeslam’s older brother blew himself up that night at a cafe.
It was at the hideout near his childhood home in Molenbeek that Abdeslam was ultimately captured on March 18. His detention may have prompted other members of the Islamic State cell to rush attack plans already in motion. Four days later, suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the Brussels airport and metro, killing 32 people. Abdeslam had told interrogators nothing about a new plot. His return to Paris offered solace to victims of the Nov. 13 bloodshed and raised hopes that French investigators would finally be able to trace the pathways of the Islamic State fighters thought to be hiding out in Europe.
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His lawyer said the 26-year-old French national had been placed under formal investigation for murder and attempted murder of a terrorist nature. Salah Abdeslam is thought to have played a key role in planning the Paris attacks and transporting the attackers. He was arrested in an 18 March raid in Brussels after four months on the run. The co-ordinated attacks carried out by so-called Islamic State in Paris on 13 November claimed 130 lives and left dozens more severely wounded.
Belgium's federal prosecutor said Salah Abdeslam had been "surrendered to the French authorities this morning (in execution of the European Arrest Warrant issued by France on 19 March 2016)". Until his next appearance in court on 20 May he will be kept in custody at Fleury-Merogis, Europe's biggest jail a short distance south of the capital where two other Islamist militants served sentences before taking part in the January 2015 attacks on Paris.
Salah Abdeslam was indicted by Belgian authorities last week over a shoot-out in the Forest area of Brussels in which four police were wounded, three days before he was arrested. He left Beveren prison near Antwerp on Wednesday under heavy French security as French criminal lawyer Frank Berton announced that he would be taking on his defence. He said they had had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting at the end of last week.
'Empty ashtray'
Security officials in Belgium's Coordinating Unit for Threat Analysis were aware of the flag being posted on Oct. 23, but did not respond, Belgian news website RTBF reported.
Abdeslam, 26, from Belgium, was arrested before the Brussels bombings took place on March 22, when 32 people were killed. He is considered to be the sole-surviving suspect of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed in coordinated bombings and shootings. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State.
Belgian authorities have previously admitted to key errors in the months leading up to the attacks, including the miscommunication of intelligence between security teams during the manhunt for Abdeslam.
Abdeslam was extradited to France in late April. He is being held in a high-security jail outside of Paris while investigations continue on terror charges of murder and attempted murder.
Report: Officials knew Salah Abdeslam posted Islamic State flag online but did nothing
"He exercised his right to silence," Frank Berton told reporters after his 26-year-old client appeared at the city's main courthouse. The lawyer said he was optimistic Abdeslam would eventually cooperate with investigators seeking to establish his role in the deaths of 130 people in the November 13 attacks. "There's a hope that he will speak to the judges," Berton said. "But it won't be today." Abdeslam has refused to answer questions since being transferred to France from Belgium in April and is believed to be angry at round-the-clock surveillance of his jail cell.
Salah Abdeslam is thought to be the sole surviving member of the jihadist gang that attacked Paris in November 2015
In July, his lawyer sought unsuccessfully to end the surveillance, a source close to the case told AFP. He was brought to court on Thursday in a heavily-guarded convoy. After four months on the run, Abdeslam was arrested on March 18 in Molenbeek, a Brussels neighbourhood notorious for being a hotbed of Islamic extremism, where he grew up.
rench police checked Salah Abdeslam's papers at a checkpoint near the Belgian border the morning after the November 13, 2015 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, but let him go 30 minutes later because he was not on their list of suspects
He was transferred to France to face terror charges on April 27. Investigators have yet to pin down Abdeslam's exact role in the coordinated attacks on Paris bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium.
Paris attacks suspect Abdeslam again refuses to answer questions
Lawyers for the main suspect in last year's Islamist attacks in Paris say they will no longer defend him as he has chosen to remain silent. Salah Abdeslam is angered at being placed under 24-hour video surveillance, Frank Berton told BFM TV. "We said from the beginning... that if our client remained silent we would quit his defence," he said alongside fellow lawyer Sven Mary. The attacks in Paris last November killed 130 people.
So-called Islamic State said it was behind the coordinated assaults on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France. Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March and has kept silent since his transfer to France in April. He is being monitored 24 hours a day by video in his prison cell. Mr Berton said in May the suspect was "particularly disturbed" by the surveillance. He told BFM TV the decision to monitor Abdeslam was a "political" one.
Abdeslam is thought to have played a key role in planning the Paris attacks and transporting the attackers, but investigators are yet to determine his specific role. The lawyers informed their client they would no longer represent him on 6 October, BFM TV reports (in French). It says that at present, he does not want to be represented by anyone else.
Legal representation is not required while the investigation continues but will be at his trial. "The real victims of all of this are the victims of the Paris attacks, because they are entitled to this truth and they have the right to try to comprehend the incomprehensible," Sven Mary said.
Salah Abdeslam - from petty crook to Islamist
