The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Salah Abdeslam

  • Paris attack suspect jailed in Belgium

    Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect from the 2015 Paris attacks, has been jailed for 20 years in Belgium over a gunfight that led to his arrest.

    Abdeslam, 28, and co-defendant Sofien Ayari were both convicted of terror-related charges of attempted murder, the BBC reports.

    Ayari, 24, was also given a 20-year sentence. Both fired on officers who raided a flat in Brussels in 2016.

    Abdeslam is being held in a jail in France and is due to face trial there over the Paris attacks themselves.

    He had refused to answer questions from the judge in the trial in Brussels, and eventually refused to attend the hearings.

    Neither he nor Ayari, a 24-year-old Tunisian national, was in court as the verdict was read out on Monday. Both received the maximum 20-year term requested by prosecutors.

    The judge, Marie France Keutgen, said “there can be no doubt” about the two men’s involvement with “radicalism.”

    “Their intention is clear from the nature of the weapons they used, the number of bullets they fired and the nature of the police officers’ wounds. Only the officers’ professional response prevented it being worse.”

     

  • Belgium extradites Paris attack suspect

    Belgium has extradited Paris attacks suspect, Salah Abdeslam, to face trial in France.

    He was wounded and arrested in a dramatic raid in Brussels on March 18 after four months on the run, the BBC reports.

    The 26-year-old French national was born in Brussels and lived there before the Paris attacks.

    Some 130 people were killed and dozens wounded in co-ordinated attacks carried out by so-called Islamic State in Paris on November 13.

    The federal prosecutor said Salah Abdeslam had been “surrendered to the French authorities this morning (in execution of the European Arrest Warrant issued by France on March 19, 2016)”.

    It is not immediately clear where he has been taken, although it is known that he was transferred recently from prison in Bruges to the high-security jail at Beveren, near Antwerp.

    Salah Abdeslam was indicted by Belgian authorities last week over a shoot-out in the Forest area of Brussels in which four police were wounded, three days before he was arrested.

  • Paris attack suspect to be extradited to France ‘in few weeks’ – lawyer

    Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in November’s Paris attacks, would be extradited to France from Belgium in a few weeks to allow for additional questioning by Belgian investigators, his lawyer said on Thursday.

    The Lawyer, Sven Mary said Abdeslam, who returned from Paris hours after the IS attacks in which his brother blew himself up, hid from police for four months until he was captured in a raid on a house in district of Molenbeek on March 18.

    His finger prints were found three days earlier in an apartment in the southern Brussels borough of Forest after a gun battle during which an Islamist gunman was shot dead and four police officers were injured.

    “Prosecutors want to question him about that incident.

    “There is a hearing, which will take place regarding the attempted murder of several police officers during the home search in Forest,’’ Mary told newsmen.
    Abdeslam, who previously said that he wanted to be extradited to France, was not present at a court hearing in Brussels.

    “As I said, he wishes to go to France and that is the reason that things need to proceed and why we hope that it will be over in a few weeks,’’ Mary added.
    The shooting and bombing rampage by IS militants killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13.

     

  • Paris attacks ‘planned from Syria’

    Friday’s attacks by terrorists in Paris were planned and organised from Syria, French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has said.

    He added that the authorities believed new terror attacks were being planned in France and other European countries.

    Mr. Valls also said 150 raids on suspected militants had been carried out across France early on Monday, the BBC reports.

    A total of 129 people died in the attacks on bars and restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France.

    A huge manhunt is under way for surviving members and accomplices of the Islamist group that carried out the attacks.

    Police has named Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, 26, as a key suspect. He was reportedly stopped by officers in the wake of the attacks – but then let go.

    Meanwhile, French aircraft has attacked Raqqa, the stronghold in Syria of the Islamic State group, which has said it carried out the attacks.

    Mr. Valls said that France was dealing with a “terrorist army,” rather than a single terrorist group.

    “We know that operations were being prepared and are still being prepared, not only against France but other European countries too,” he said, quoted by AFP news agency.

    The prime minister said more than 150 raids on militant targets in different areas of France took place early on Monday.

    Police sources told news agencies that properties in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, as well as the cities of Grenoble, Toulouse and Lyon, had been targeted.

    Seven attackers died in the assault on the French capital, most of them after detonating suicide belts.