Paris suspect ‘took a holiday’ in Austria
Print Edition
AUSTRIAN police are trying to pin down the movements in Austria of a suspect in Friday’s attacks in Paris, who entered the country from Germany in September and told the authorities he was on holiday, the interior ministry said yesterday.
An official named the man as Belgian-born Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 26, who escaped back to Belgium on Saturday after the attacks and eluded a police dragnet in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, where he lived with his two brothers.
The Austrian interior ministry said Abdeslam entered Austria from Germany on September 9 with two other men who so far have not been named in connection with the attacks.
Abdeslam attracted attention when the authorities stopped the vehicle he was traveling in.
“He said he was going on holiday in Vienna, but there are no further details. Now the question is where did he stay in Austria, and for what purpose,” Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told ORF radio.
One of Abdeslam’s brothers died in the suicide bombings and shootings in Paris in which 129 people were killed. The other brother was arrested at the weekend, but later released.
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece last month.
His role in the attacks has fueled speculation that Islamic State took advantage of a wave of refugees fleeing Syria to slip militants into Europe.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have passed through Austria, the overwhelming majority on their way to Germany, in the past two months. Abdeslam was traveling in the opposite direction and was not posing as a refugee.
A series of people in Austria has, however, been convicted on terrorism charges, and the Interior Ministry said more than 200 people have traveled from the central European country to wage jihad in the Middle East.
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