The revelation came days after police in Belgium arrested a chief suspect wanted in both the Paris and Brussels attacks.
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The cell, which was directly involved in the November attacks on Paris which killed 130 people, had initially planned to stage a second deadly strike in France, but they changed their plans as investigators closed in.
Another main suspect who was seen alongside the suicide bomber in the Brussels metro, identified by prosecutors as Osama K, was also arrested on Friday in the Belgian capital.
Prosecutors said that Abrini’s DNA and fingerprints were found in two “safe houses” in the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek and in a vehicle used during the Paris attacks.
He was among six men arrested on Friday over last month’s attacks. He’s been charged with participating in terrorist activities and “terrorist murders”.
The other suspects charged Saturday were identified as Osama Krayem, Herve B.M. and Bilal E. M.
But the perpetrators were “surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investigation” and made a decision to rush an attack on Brussels instead of going back to France, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Four days later, suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train.
Teri Schultz tells NPR’s Newscast unit that this information emerged after authorities arrested and interrogated key suspects.
Western intelligence and counterterrorism officials say their working assumption is that there are potentially comparable cells – although the one in Paris and Brussels may have been particularly large – in two or more European countries, including Britain and Germany, and that they are poised to carry out attacks.
The other suspects charged over the weekend were identified as Osama Krayem, who left the Swedish city of Malmo to fight in Syria and was described by one relative as having been “brainwashed”.
The federal prosecutor gave no details of the planned attack in France but late last month, French police arrested Reda Kriket near Paris, finding weapons and explosives in a flat he had used to suggest he was planning an act of “extreme violence”.
YVES HERMAN/REUTERS Belgian soldiers and special forces police keep guard outside a courthouse as Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdelslam remains in police custody in Brussels.
“He was quite open about his activities”, said Magnus Ranstorp, a professor at Sweden’sNational Defense College who tracked Mr. Krayem at that time through his social network posts.
He has admitted to being “the man in the hat”, prosecutors said.
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The lawyer, Koen Vaneecke, told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that Mr Makhouki was never a member of Sharia4Belgium and denies all charges over the Brussels attacks.
