Belgian police have arrested five people in counter-terror raids in Brussels, including Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam and the family who sheltered him, prosecutors said.
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Abdeslam, a French national, is subject to a European arrest warrant issued by France, but his lawyer Sven Mary has said he will fight extradition.
“I refuse, we refuse the extradition to France as there’s still a Belgian investigation, which is ongoing”.
He said French authorities suspect him of bringing numerous “terrorists” to Europe in the months leading up to the attacks and conducting multiples trips around Europe.
The coordinated attacks in Paris marked the first major terrorist attack for which the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility.
Abdeslam will now appear before a pretrial court on Wednesday, which will decide whether he stays in jail for up to another month. But whether the suspect fights extradition or not, “sooner or later he will be extradited to France”, the Belgian prosecutor said. In it, Belkaid provides a telephone number for a relative in Algeria and declares that he has no experience as a jihadist fighter.
French President Francois Hollande met with key cabinet ministers and security officials to discuss how to proceed following the arrest.
Belgian investigators say he is likely to have been an associate of Abdeslam.
“I wouldn’t say that I felt any relief that [he] has been arrested because it’s really hard to put just one face to such a huge atrocity”, said Charlotte Brehaut, a France 24 journalist, NBC News reported.
Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive from the November 13 attacks, had left behind a fingerprint. Next to his body, investigators discovered a Kalashnikov rifle and a book on Salafism, the radical Sunni ideology associated with the Islamic State (IS).
The prime suspect over autumn’s deadly Paris terror attacks had planned to kill himself in the atrocities but backed out at the last moment, prosecutors have revealed. His older brother was one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up during the attacks, which killed 80 people. Early that morning, Abdeslam had called two friends in Brussels to come fetch him in Paris.
Some neighbors were clearly shaken at the fact that the young man with French nationality but close ties to Molenbeek had been living in their midst despite the huge police manhunt.
Two others who had been implicated in sheltering Abdeslam were released Saturday by police, even though one of them was charged with hiding criminals.
A pizza-loving terrorist’s unusually large order of pies may have led to his capture.
Abdeslam is, as of this writing, in police custody in Belgium, where he has been charged with “participation in terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation”.
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Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out the attacks. The vehicle he drove was abandoned in northern Paris, and his mobile phone and an explosive vest he may have used were later found in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest or fleeing in fear.
