Paris terror suspect to stand trial in Belgium
Print Edition
Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam was yesterday ordered to stand trial in Belgium over a shootout with police in Brussels last year that led to his capture after a four-month hunt for Europe’s most wanted man.
Abdeslam, the sole surviving alleged assailant in the November 2015 Paris massacre, was arrested three days after the shootout on March 15 last year in which several officers were wounded.
Belgian judges yesterday ordered Abdeslam, 27, and his alleged accomplice Sofiane Ayari, 24, to stand trial in Brussels criminal court, with the date set in a few weeks, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
The two will be tried for “attempted murder of several police officers in a terrorist context” and “carrying banned weapons in a terrorist context,” the office said in a statement.
Abdeslam remains in custody in France where he was transferred from Belgium in April last year and where he is also to face trial over his alleged role in the Paris attacks.
Police officers hurt
A female French police officer and Belgian colleagues were wounded at the Forest neighborhood apartment in which an Algerian Islamist suspect was killed. Abdeslam and Ayari fled the apartment that police had initially thought was empty.
After finding Abdeslam’s fingerprints in the apartment, police arrested him and Ayari during a raid on March 18, 2016 in the gritty Brussels immigrant neighborhood of Molenbeek, shooting Abdeslam in the leg.
Investigators suspect that Abdeslam’s arrest precipitated the suicide bombings in Brussels four days later by jihadists who feared that they too would be captured before they could carry out their plot.
French and Belgian police believe the same cell plotted the Paris bombing and gun attacks, which left 130 people dead, and the Brussels suicide bombings, which cost the lives of 32 people at Zaventem airport and Malbeek metro station.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks.
Abdeslam was not present or represented by a lawyer at yesterday’s court, while Ayari was absent but represented by his lawyer.
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