YVES HERMAN/REUTERS Belgian special forces police climb high on an apartment block during a raid, in search of suspected muslim fundamentalists linked to the deadly attacks in Paris, in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, November 16.
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Police found traces of explosives, three handmade belts and a fingerprint of fugitive Salah Abdeslam.
The third-floor apartment in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels was searched December 10, the statement said.
Abdeslam has been on the run since the November 13 attacks at several locations throughout Paris which killed 130 people.
Belgian police also found traces of acetone peroxide (also known as TATP), a crystalline powder that can be used to make explosives, in the flat.
Prosecutors appealed to people for assistance in the hunt for both of these guys who travelled to Hungary in September with Abdeslam using fake identity cards together with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal on December 4.
The detonators were added to the explosive devices at a hotel near Paris (Alfortville), where Salah Abdeslam had booked two rooms. It’s a year to the day since an attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo launched a bloody year in the French capital.
After slipping through a police dragnet, they said, he apparently hid out in the same Brussels apartment that served as the killers’ bomb factory. A French gendarme stopped their auto near the border but released the men.
Authorities now believe Abdeslam returned to the apartment where he was eventually picked up by someone else “and we lost trace”, van der Sypt said.
France has long said the attacks were prepared and organised in Belgium and the mastermind was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Brussels resident who was killed in a police raid in Paris days after the massacre.
Police have been on the hunt for Abdeslam for weeks after he fled Paris following the attacks. “This could indicate that the flat was used as a hide-out” said VRT’s Liesbeth Indeherberghe. Belgian investigators have so far arrested ten people, many of whom have links to Abdeslam. The two friends are among those arrested. Seven died in the assault but the total number of those directly involved is unclear.
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The attackers wore suicide vests during their attacks on the Stade de France, Bataclan, and bars and restaurants.
