The 26-year-old Abdeslam, who had been on the run for four months, and an alleged accomplice who was captured with him were initially taken to a Brussels hospital for treatment for gunshot injuries sustained in the police raid.
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On the fatal Friday evening, Salah made a serious of phone calls to acquaintances in Brussels, finding two who drove to Paris – they say totally unaware – to pick him up hours after the attacks.
Investigators believe he drove three suicide bombers to the Stade de France before travelling to the 18th arrondissement and abandoning the hire auto in Place Albert Kahn.
Abdeslam was injured in a gunbattle with experts in an anti- raid within the Brussels’ suburb of Molenbeek. He was believed to have slipped through police fingers multiple times despite an worldwide manhunt.
Abdeslam is also wanted by ISIS because he failed in his mission.Abdeslam was not armed and he surrendered immediately, the Belgian prosecutors office said.
He and two other suspects were detained in a raid in Molenbeek.
Authorities first sealed off the neighborhood. “I think the humanity behind all that is really much bigger than this”, she said. We heard noises all around. “And that’s when they pulled out the Salah (guy.) They put him to the ground”.
She described seeing the suspect put into an ambulance followed by a SWAT team.
Brothers Brahim and Salah ran a family cafe in Molenbeek – which police closed down not long before the attacks on suspicion of drug dealing there.
Belgian federal prosecutor’s workplace spokesman Eric Van der Sypt explained the others arrested integrated three members of the household who served hide Abdeslam.
Speaking in Brussels, French president Francois Hollande said he is sure the Belgian authorities will answer an extradition request “as favourably as possible, as soon as possible”. Experts in security and local society who spoke to Reuters in the days after the Paris attacks said Molenbeek, and Brussels more generally, offered a degree of anonymity to radicals, including those returned from fighting in Turkey, because they felt with Muslims who would shield them and understand them.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference Saturday that his government has no “political objections” to handing Abdeslam over to the French, but wants to fully respect Belgian judicial procedure which “can take at least a couple of weeks”. Prosecutors said on Friday these may have been Abdeslam and the man called Choukri.
The Belgian prosecutor said police had also arrested members of a family suspected of having sheltered Abdeslam.
The Paris massacres were a heinous assault on civilians in one of the most loved cities in the world. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the Brussels area Thursday.
There has also been speculation, associated with the finding of an abandoned suicide vest in Paris and the apparent panic of Abdeslam in calling friends to pick him up, that the younger brother had been meant to kill himself. but changed his mind.
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Security services will be seeking information from Abdeslam on Islamic State plans and structures, his contacts in Europe and Syria and support networks and finance.
