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- Dec 23, 2015
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Gaidi number moja aliyehusishwa na milipuko ya Ufaransa mwaka jana mwishoni hatimae amekamatwa huko Brussels Belgium. Habari zimethibitishwa na Wazir wa mambo ya ndani wa Belgium
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Chanzo: Telegraph
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The day's events
Questions were raised last night as to how Europe's most-wanted man managed to evade police, apparently hiding in the same Brussels neighbourhood for four months, writes Henry Samuel.
"We got him" were the words Belgium's immigration minister, Theo Francken, used to announce the capture of Salah Abdeslam.
Thought to be the last surviving member of the 10-strong commando that carried out the Paris terror attacks - the worst-ever on French soil - Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels along with three other suspects.
Asking for Abdeslam to be extradited to France "as soon as possible", a request the Belgians said was a "formality", Francois Hollande, the French president said: "My thoughts go out to the victims" of the Paris attacks. Abdeslam, he said, clearly played a major role.
Police secure the scene
But Mr Hollande, who was by coincidence in Brussels for an EU summit on the migrant crisis, added: "We are aware that if this arrest is an important step, it is not the definitive conclusion.
"We know that the network was very wide in Belgium, France and other European countries. We must continue and pursue our efforts."
While he and Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, were "congratulated" by phone with US president Barack Obama, neither would be drawn over claims of woeful intelligence blunders, as Abdeslam was seized after four months on the run and a series of excruciating near misses.
A lack of information sharing between Belgium and France saw the prime suspect waltz through three police checks in France hours after commandos massacre 130 in the French capital. He is then thought to have outfoxed police by hiding in a sofa. Rumours abounded that he had fled to Syria. Then there were reports he had hidden three weeks in a flat outside Brussels for three weeks after his fingerprints were found there.
A police surveillance drone at the scene in Molenbeek
In the end police trapped the 26-year old a few hundred yards from where he grew up and where he was last spotted the day after the Paris attacks - in Molenbeek, the suburb home to several of the Paris gunmen and which has been described by some experts as a "den of Islamists".
Wounded in the knee during the police raid and taken to hospital, Abedslam "instantly" confirmed his identity from his bed.
Earlier, volleys of shots and explosions rang out on Friday afternoon as a major police operation unfolded in the Belgian capital with several parallel sieges.
Three other suspects were seized in the raids.
Police guard an entrance of a school during the raid in Molenbeek
Abdeslam's capture came just a day after his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the massacre, was buried in a discreet ceremony on Thursday in Brussels.
It is thought that Salah was also meant to blow himself up that night after driving other suicide bombers to the Stade de France football stadium. But it appears that he had last-minute second thoughts, discarding a primed suicide vest in a dustbin in Paris and wandering around aimlessly all that night in tears, according to friends who drove him back to Brussels. Adding weight to that is Isil's statement claiming responsibility for the killings, which mentioned a bombing in Paris' 18th arrondissement that never happened. Abdeslam left his car in this area. Isil have not mentioned him since.
His arrest came hours after prosecutors revealed that Abdeslam's fingerprints were found in a flat in another suburb of Brussels following a raid earlier this week in which a suspected accomplice, Mohamed Belkaid, was killed - Isil flag and Kalashnikov by his side.
It is thought that Abdeslam was among two suspects who managed to escape that raid by climbing onto the roof. According to BFMTV, since then he had difficulty finding another hideout as police were surveilling three potential safe houses. Police reportedly homed in on Abdeslam after he phoned a known contact in search of a place to stay, and after a tip-off on Friday morning.
Belkaid, who went by the false name of Samir Bouzid, reportedly communicated with the Paris commandos on the night of the attacks and also wired €750 to the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud - the suspected ringleader. Both Abaaoud and his cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, died in a police raid in a police raid in Saint Denis outside Paris on November 17.
Armed police at the scene in Molenbeek
Belgium has been at the heart of the investigation into the Paris attacks from the start, and has come under fire - notably in France - for alleged blunders that let the perpetrators slip under the radar.
Abdeslam fled to Brussels after the attacks and is believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks evading detection by the Belgian police.
However, in a sign of increasingly close cooperation, it was the actions of a joint French-Belgian police team that appears to have led to Abdeslam's capture when they stumbled upon his hideout during a raid on Tuesday. Four officers were injured as they came under automatic gunfire. Three days later, Abdeslam is behind bars.
Chanzo: Telegraph
