An global arrest warrant has also been issued for Abdeslam. Abrini was driving a Renault Clio that was used two days later to commit the attacks in Paris, authorities said.
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The alleged mastermind behind this month’s Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people and injured 350 more took an active part in the carnage and even returned to the scenes of the assaults to examine his handiwork, French authorities said Tuesday.
François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said that Abaaoud had boarded a metro going back to the centre of Paris and the phone he was believed to be using was detected in the 10th, 11th and 12th districts, and by the Bataclan concert hall while attacks there ongoing. Police found two handguns and traces of blood in his auto, the prosecutor said.
A new suspect is being hunted by police investigating the Paris terror attacks.
The prosecutor’s statement said the man had been charged with “participating in activities of a terrorist group and with [a] terrorist attack”.
Meanwhile a fourth suspect arrested in a raid on Sunday was identified as Ali O., whom prosecutors said was arrested on suspicion of driving Salah Abdeslam after he was dropped off in Brussels, it said.
Streets remained quiet as schools, shopping malls and the Brussels’s metro remained closed after the country’s Prime Minister Charles Michel said Monday that the threat of a Paris-style attack in the city remains high.
Abdeslam is suspected of playing at least a logistical role in the coordinated shooting and suicide bombings in the French capital on 13 November.
Police said the vest has not been formally linked to Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim was one of those who blew themselves up when the Bataclan concert hall was targeted as well as the Stade de France and a number of restaurants. He didn’t, however, specify what the charges were or if they were linked to the attacks.
– Did a suicide vest investigators found in a Paris suburb this week belong to him?
President Francois Hollande has been rallying global support for the enhanced military campaign against IS, winning the support of the United States during a visit to Washington on Tuesday.
Authorities said the device, which did not have a detonator, was in a pile of rubble in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told MPs on Tuesday that 124 people had been charged in France since a state of emergency was imposed, following more than 1,230 searches in which 230 weapons were recovered.
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The proximity of the two – and the similarity of the vest to those worn by seven suicide bombers in the attacks – led investigators to believe the fugitive, Salah Abdeslam, had aborted the suicide mission before fleeing France, they added.
