Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in November’s Paris attacks, will no longer fight extradition to France as he had vowed to do but instead now wants to return to “explain himself ” , his lawyer said on Thursday”.
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Belgian prosecutors said on Wednesday that two brothers carried out suicide attacks at Brussels airport and on a metro train, with one of them leaving a desperate will in a trash can saying he did not know what do any more.
Investigators are convinced that all five of the Brussels attackers are part of the same Islamic State network involved in the November strikes that killed 130 people at a stadium, rock concert and cafes in Paris.
Daesh has claimed responsibility for the attacks in both Paris and Brussels.
Turkey’s president this week criticized Belgium for failing to track the brothers -Brahim, a convicted Belgian armed robber whom it deported a year ago and who blew himself up at the airport on Tuesday, and Khalid, who set off his suicide vest at a metro station in the city center an hour later.
Explosions and gunfire were heard Friday amid police raids in the Brussels neighborhood where the suicide bomber suspected of making the explosives used in Tuesday’s terror attacks assembled the deadly devices.
On Thursday police sources told AFP that Belgian authorities are seeking a second suspect over the metro bombing in Brussels in which one suicide bomber has already been confirmed dead.
Belgian officials have not publicly linked any of the remains to Laachraoui; nor have they said he was involved in the Brussels attack.
Another raid, in France, led to the arrest of a man connected to the mastermind of last year’s Paris attacks.
Officials believe they’ve identified the third man seen on a security camera just before the bombing of the Brussels airport.
Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border in June 2015 and deported him as a “foreign terrorist fighter ” , piling more pressure on Belgian authorities who have faced criticism for failing to tackle the extremist menace”.
Abdeslam is thought to have rented rooms, shopped for detonators and driven at least one of the killers from Brussels to Paris.
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Later Thursday, European Union justice and interior ministers are holding an emergency meeting prompted by the Brussels attacks.
