Paris terror suspect planned to ‘restart something’
Print Edition
PARIS attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam was planning to “restart something” from Brussels, Belgium’ said yesterday.
Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Abdeslam, who woke up behind bars yesterday after spending his first night in jail on charges of “terrorist murder” for his role in orchestrating the worst-ever terror assault on French soil, “was ready to restart something from Brussels, and it’s maybe the reality.”
Authorities are taking the claim seriously because “we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels,” he said.
Abdeslam, who was caught after being shot in the leg during a police raid on Friday in Brussels, told interrogators he had planned to blow himself up at the Stade de France stadium in Paris but had backed out at the last minute.
The 26-year-old spent four months as Europe’s most wanted man for his role in organizing the November 13 gun and suicide attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.
A day after he was caught, Abdeslam was charged with terrorist murder and participating in a terror group before being taken to a maximum security prison in Bruges.
He is being held in the prison’s “individual and special safety” wing, which was built for those who pose an escape risk or have particular behavioral problems.
Although he was cooperating with the authorities, he would fight plans to transfer him to France, his lawyer Sven Mary said.
Mary promised to fight arduously to defend Abdeslam and said he would file a complaint against French prosecutors today for violating the confidentiality of an ongoing investigation.
“Reading out Abdeslam’s deposition during a press conference is a violation” of the law, he was quoted as saying by Le Soir newspaper yesterday.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins on Saturday told reporters that Abdeslam had played a “central role” in planning the November attacks.
His brother Brahim blew himself up in a restaurant in the east of the French capital, and Molins said Abdeslam had planned to do the same before changing his mind.
French President Francois Hollande said shortly after Abdesla’s arrest in Brussels on Friday that he wanted to see him transferred to France as quickly as possible to face prosecution.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said it dealt a “major blow” to IS operating in Europe, though warned that the threat level remained “extremely high.” France was deploying extra police to its borders to step up controls following discussions with Interpol, he said.
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