Paris attacks suspect reported to be planning new acts
BRUSSELS – The top suspect in last year’s Paris attacks told investigators after he was captured that he was planning new operations from Brussels and possibly had access to several weapons, Belgium’s foreign minister said Sunday.
Salah Abdeslam had claimed that “he was ready to restart something from Brussels, and it’s maybe the reality,” Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said.
Reynders gave credence to the suspect’s claim 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.”
Abdeslam, captured Friday in a police raid in Brussels, was charged Saturday with “terrorist murder” by Belgian authorities. He is a top suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.
Abdeslam was wounded during the raid, and a senior Belgian police official said he was shot in the leg as he ran toward officers outside an apartment in the Molenbeek neighborhood.
The head of Belgium’s special federal police unit, Roland Pacolet, told broadcaster RTL that one hypothesis being studied by police was that the suspect wanted to commit suicide.
“When someone comes out running toward the police, we have to ask ourselves some questions. What did he have in mind? What was he going to do? Either he wanted to get killed by the police, or he wanted to blow himself up near the police,” Pacolet said.
He said Abdeslam was unarmed.
Speaking to security experts at a German Marshall Fund conference in Brussels, the foreign minister said “we have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure that there are others.”
Abdeslam’s Belgian lawyer, meanwhile, threatened to launch legal action Monday against a French prosecutor, accusing him of breaching the confidentiality of the investigation into the deadly rampage in Paris.
During the news conference Saturday, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Abdeslam, 26, told Belgian officials he had “wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France” as a suicide bomber, but that he backed out at the last minute.