Belgian and French authorities will now consider how to proceed to carry out the transfer.
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“Salah Abdeslam wants to be handed over to the French authorities”, Moisse told reporters in Brussels. Abdeslam also told his brother that he was “accountable to the French but not to the Belgians”.
The transfer should happen “within 10 days”, French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said after the ruling was announced on Thursday.
Investigators believe the attacks in Paris and Brussels were carried out by militants from the same Islamic State network.
Abdeslam, who was on the run for four months after the Paris attack, told Belgian authorities he was supposed to kill himself during the operation but instead abandoned his suicide vest and fled the country, slipping back into Belgium the same night.
A temporary substitute check-in area has been arranged, but it can hold only about 20% of normal capacity, the airport says. “Luckily, I couldn’t go through with it”.
This stated the federal prosecution office on Thursday (31 March) and confirmed what a colleague of the suspect’s lawyer had said after leaving the court.
A man referred to officially as Facyal C was released on 28 March after being arrested on 24 March in Brussels and charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders”.
Following his dramatic capture last month, in which Abdeslam was shot in the leg and bundled into a auto in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, the 26-year-old will now be extradited from Belgium to France.
Kriket was charged on Wednesday with terrorist conspiracy, possession of weapons and explosives, and falsification of documents, among other offences, Mr Molins said. Belgium has increasingly found itself at the centre of Europe’s battle against terrorism and authorities have faced strong criticism for not doing enough to keep tabs on suspected extremists.
He was reportedly only questioned for one hour between March 18 and March 22.
Another French suspect, 32-year-old Anis Bahri, was arrested in Rotterdam in the Netherlands on Sunday in connection with the foiled Paris plot and is fighting extradition to France.
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His fingerprints were found in a flat rented by Khalid el-Bakraoui, who blew himself up on the Brussels metro station on March 22.
