Mohamed Abrini, the man suspected of last year’s Brussels airport attack, has been placed under formal investigation in France over the 2015 Paris terror attacks, his lawyers say.
He was handed over to French authorities for a day so he could be charged.
Mohamed Abrini was arrested last April in Brussels.
The gun and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, killed 130 people.
Mohamed Abrini was spotted in a car with key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam when it stopped at a petrol station in Ressons two days before the attacks on the French capital.
His fingerprints and DNA were found in two “safe houses” in Brussels, as well as in a car used during the Paris attacks.
Following his arrest, Mohamed Abrini also admitted picking up Salah Abdeslam after the attacks and driving him back to Belgium.
He was driven to Paris from Belgium in a heavily armed convoy so the case against him could be formally launched, BFMTV reported.
Mohamed Abrini was not asked any questions during his court appearance in front of six judges, his lawyer Emmanuel Pierrat said in a statement.
However, the lawyer said his client was in Belgium when the attacks in Paris were carried out.
Emmanuel Pierrat also said the fact that Mohamed Abrini was being investigated in both France and Belgium over the Paris attacks could lead to legal complications.
Mohamed Abrini is also under investigation in Belgium over the bomb attack on Brussels Zaventem Airport, which along with an attack on a metro station in the city killed 32 people.
Both the Paris and Brussels attacks were claimed by ISIS.
Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers say they will no longer defend the main suspect in last year’s Islamist attacks in Paris.
He will use his right to remain silent, one of the lawyers, Frank Berton, told BFM TV.
“We said from the beginning… that if our client remained silent we would quit his defense,” Frank Berton said, alongside fellow lawyer Sven Mary.
The attacks in Paris in November 2015 on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France killed 130 people.
ISIS said it was behind the attacks.
Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March 2016 and has kept silent since his transfer to France in April.
The attacker is being monitored 24 hours a day by video in his prison cell.
Frank Berton said in May the suspect was “particularly disturbed” by the surveillance.
Salah Abdeslam is thought to have played a key role in planning the Paris attacks and transporting the attackers, but investigators are yet to determine his specific role.
The lawyers informed Salah Abdeslam they would no longer represent him on October 6, BFM TV reports. It says that at present, he does not want to be represented by anyone else.
Legal representation is not required while the investigation continues but will be at his trial.
“The real victims of all of this are the victims of the Paris attacks, because they are entitled to this truth and they have the right to try to comprehend the incomprehensible,” Sven Mary said.
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been extradited from Belgium to face trial in France.
Salah Abdeslam, 26, was wounded and arrested in a dramatic raid in Brussels on March 18 after four months on the run.
The French national was born in Brussels and lived there before the Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam would be held in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison in the Paris area, said Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas.
The co-ordinated attacks carried out by so-called Islamic State in Paris on November 13, 2015, claimed 130 lives and left dozens more severely wounded.
Belgium’s 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]”. He was then formally placed under arrest.
Although Salah Abdeslam was initially held at a prison in Bruges, he had most recently been in custody at a high-security jail at Beveren, near Antwerp.
He is charged in France with participation in terrorist murder and the activities of a terrorist organization.
He was also 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.
Earlier, French criminal lawyer Frank Berton told French media that he would be taking on Salah Abdeslam’s defence in France following a two-and-a-half-hour meeting between the two last Friday at Beveren.
Frank Berton BFMTV he hoped the man would be judged “for what he has done and not what he has not done… not for what he represents because he is the last survivor”. Most of the Paris attackers are now dead.
He described Salah Abdeslam as “falling apart because of the drama that unfolded in France” and said he wanted to explain his actions.
Frank Berton said he was aware of the risks in representing his client, but insisted “he has the right to a fair trial”.
Salah Abdeslam’s Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary, has spoken of the dangers he faced in representing him – telling France’s Liberation website that he was threatened, assaulted physically and verbally in his office, and that on occasion police had escorted his daughters to school.
One of the Brussels bombers once worked as a cleaner at the European Parliament, officials say.
The man had month-long summer jobs there in 2009 and 2010, the EU Parliament said, without revealing his identity.
However, sources say he is Najim Laachraoui, one of the airport bombers.
Belgian PM Charles Michel has defended his country’s approach to fighting terror threats, insisting Belgium is not a “failed state”.
Charles Michel said everyone in authority had to take a share of the blame for failings before and after March 22.
Najim Laachraoui, already a major suspect on the run after the Paris attacks in November, was named as one of the two bombers who targeted Zaventem airport.
Photo AFP
The EU Parliament said the cleaning company had provided proof that the person hired had no criminal record at the time.
PM Charles Michel said 30 measures were being put place in Belgium, including a ban on pre-paid mobile phone cards.
“Our key message today is we return to normal life in Brussels and in Belgium,” the Associated Press quoted him as telling reporters.
“When there is an attack like that of course that’s a failure and nobody can deny this,” he said.
“[But] I cannot accept the idea that we’re a failed state.”
Belgium has been accused of taking an un-co-ordinated approach to terror threats because it has multiple institutions representing the country’s complex linguistic and political makeup.
The Brussels region alone has six police zones.
According to Belgium’s De Tijd newspaper, Charles Michel said it was “short-sighted to say a unified police force could have prevented the attacks”.
He said there had been some successes like the recent arrest of the surviving suspect of the Paris attacks last November, Salah Abdeslam, adding it had taken 10 years to track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks in the US.
The search for the March 22 attackers is not yet over as pictures taken at Zaventem airport show three men entering the terminal building with explosives.
Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui detonated their bombs and the third is thought to have escaped.
A man has been charged with terrorist offences, in connection with March 22 attacks in Brussels that left 31 dead, including three bombers, Belgian prosecutors say.
The man was named as Faycal Cheffou and was arrested on March 24.
At least half the victims died at the airport, the rest in an attack on the metro in suicide bombings claimed by ISIS.
Meanwhile a demonstration against the attacks, planned for March 27 in central Brussels, has been canceled after a request from the authorities.
Organizers said people’s security was a top priority.
Belgian prosecutors said that Faycal C had been detained outside the prosecutor’s office in Brussels on March 24. A search of his home had found no weapons.
Faycal C was charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders,” a statement said.
It gave no further details and made no comment on Belgian media reports that he was the third man in an airport CCTV image that showed the two suicide bombers – Najim Laachraoui on the left, and Brahim el-Bakraoui. Belgian media say the third man is Faycal Cheffou, a freelance journalist.
The third man, wearing a hat and pale jacket, also had luggage packed with explosives. However, he was said to have fled without detonating his device. It was detonated in a controlled explosion once the departures hall was cleared.
Brahim el-Bakraoui’s brother Khalid carried out the Maelbeek metro attack.
Faycal C was among 12 people arrested on March 24 and 25 in police raids in Belgium, France and Germany.
Four days before the Brussels attacks, the key suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks which killed 130 people, Salah Abdeslam, was detained in a raid in Brussels. Police said he was initially co-operative.
Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens later confirmed in parliament that Salah Abdeslam “no longer wants to talk since attacks” in Brussels.
Separately, Brussels airport authorities said the “investigative work related to the judicial inquiry into the airport terminal has been completed” but that passenger activity could not resume before March 22.
Airport engineers and technicians are getting access to the terminal for the first time since the attack.
They will assess the damage and stability of the building. The airport authorities will also put new security measures in place.
The check-in area suffered severe damage when two blasts seconds apart hit opposite ends of the departures hall.
In addition to the dead, 340 people were injured. One hundred and one remain in hospital, of whom 62 are in intensive care.
In his weekly address on March 26, President Barack Obama paid his respects to the victims and said attempts to stigmatize Muslim-Americans should be rejected.
Meanwhile, Mariah Carey has canceled a concert scheduled for Brussels on March 27, citing security concerns.
In a separate development, Belgian prosecutors denied the murder of a security official at the Fleurus nuclear research centre was a terrorist act, the Belga news agency reported.
Six people have been arrested in Brussels as a major investigation continues into attacks that claimed 31 lives in the Belgian capital on March 22.
All suspects have been arrested in the Schaerbeek district. There is no word yet on the identities of the suspects or their possible connection to the attacks.
Separately, in France, a suspect who was plotting an attack has been arrested near Paris, officials said.
The Brussels bombings have been linked to last November’s Paris attacks.
ISIS has claimed the attacks in both Paris and Brussels.
The arrests in Schaerbeek were made on March 24, and followed house-to-house searches in the area.
Residents said they heard explosions during the police raids but the cause was unclear.
Also on March 24, French police launched an anti-terror operation in Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, following the arrest hours earlier of a man suspected of planning an attack.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the suspected militant, a French national, was in an “advanced stage” of a plot, adding that no connection had been made to either the Brussels or the Paris attacks.
Police sources quoted in French media say the suspect had been convicted in his absence in another European country for seeking ISIS recruits to go to Syria.
In November 2015, 130 people died after militants opened fire and detonated bombs in a number of locations in Paris.
Also on March 24, Belgium admitted that it had made “errors” relating to one of the Brussels attackers.
Turkey has said it arrested and deported Brahim el-Bakraoui last June, warning Belgium he was a “foreign fighter” – but was “ignored”. The Dutch authorities had also been alerted, Ankara said.
The Belgian interior and justice ministers said they had offered to resign over this but added that the prime minister refused to let them.
Brahim el-Bakraoui is one of three men who carried out the bombings at Zaventem airport that killed 11 people.
Unconfirmed reports say another of the Brussels airport attackers was the wanted jihadist Najim Laachraoui, whose DNA was found on explosives linked to the attacks in Paris.
The third suspected airport attacker has not yet been identified and is on the run.
Brahim el-Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid, struck at Maelbeek metro station, where 20 people died.
There are reports of a second suspect being sought for that attack. One source told AFP news agency that a man with a large bag had been seen beside Khalid el-Bakraoui on surveillance footage at the metro station.
Meanwhile, VRT reported that investigators were working on the assumption that the cell had been planning a far bigger attack, involving Paris-style shootings as well as suicide bombings.
Links have also emerged with Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam was arrested and wounded in a police raid on a flat in the Forest area of Brussels on March 18 – four days before the attacks in the Belgian capital.
Investigators say Khalid el-Bakraoui used a false name to rent the same flat.
On March 24, Salah Abdeslam’s lawyer said he had changed his mind and would not fight extradition from Belgium to France.
Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national born in Belgium, did not have prior knowledge of the Brussels bombings and had stopped co-operating with police following the attacks, his lawyer Sven Mary said.
A court hearing on March 24 on the detention of Salah Abdeslam and two other suspects has been postponed until April 7.
Two explosions have struck the departures area of Zaventem airport in Brussels, Belgium.
Belgian officials have confirmed casualties but have given no numbers. The cause of the explosions is unknown.
Another explosion has now been reported at the Maelbeek metro station close to the EU institutions. The whole metro system has been closed.
The explosions come four days after the capture in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the jihadist attacks in Paris in November 2015.
Belgium has now raised its terror threat to its highest level.
Emergency services are clearing the airport completely. Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws reports that more bombs have been found.
The airport is being evacuated and has been closed to flights.
Shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two explosions, the Belga news agency reports.
Images on social media showed smoke rising from one of the buildings, amid reports of panic as people fled the airport.
Rail transport to the facility has been halted and people have been told not to come to the airport.
Photo Wikipedia
All flights have been diverted.
Other reports say at least one of the explosions was close to the American Airlines check-in area but this has not been confirmed.
The Belgian broadcaster RTBF quoted a witness as saying there were people injured or unconscious in the departure area, opposite the Sheraton hotel.
There are few reports yet about the metro blast.
Belgium’s Interior Minister Jan Jambon had said on March 21 that the country was on the highest level of alert for possible revenge attacks after the capture of Salah Abdeslam.
He told Belgian radio: “We know that stopping one cell can… push others into action. We are aware of it in this case.”
Zaventem airport is 7 miles north-east of Brussels and dealt with more than 23 million passengers in 2015.
Najim Laachraoui has been identified as an accomplice of captured Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Belgian prosecutors say.
The 24-year-old man is still on the run. A statement said he had been using false ID and that his DNA had been found in houses used by the suspected jihadist network.
Salah Abdeslam was captured in Brussels on March 18 and is still being interrogated.
However, Belgium’s federal prosecutor said he was “still far from solving the puzzle” of the Paris attacks.
“We have quite a few pieces of the puzzle and in the last few days several pieces have found their place,” Frederic Van Leeuw told journalists in Brussels.
ISIS said it was behind the Paris attacks.
The prosecutor’s statement said that Salah Abdeslam had traveled twice to the Hungarian capital Budapest, using a rental car in September 2015.
In the car were two other men, using fake Belgian identity cards with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal.
Soufiane Kayal has now been identified as Najim Laachraoui by DNA found at houses in the town of Auvelais and the Brussels district of Schaerbeek.
“The investigation showed that Soufiane Kayal can be identified as Najim Laachraoui, born on 18 May 1991 and who traveled to Syria in February 2013,” the statement said.
Belgian police said Samir Bouzid was “most probably” Mohamed Belkaid. He was killed by a police sniper in a raid on a flat outside Brussels on March 15.
The prosecutor appealed for public help in finding Najim Laachraoui.
Also still sought is Mohamed Abrini, who was filmed at petrol stations with Salah Abdeslam two days before the Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam’s lawyer, Sven Mary, meanwhile told Belgian radio that his client appeared “relieved” that the hunt was over.
He said: “Salah wants to co-operate and he’s done that since Saturday. Are we going to apply for the status [of informer]? He’s never said he wants to be an informer. I’ve never said that he’s asked for that.”
The lawyer added: “I have said that he can be of invaluable worth for different parties. He can give invaluable information for police as well as judges and lawyers.
“The statements of the French prosecutor… could ensure that Abdeslam is scared off.”
Sven Mary was referring to comments over the weekend by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins that Salah Abdeslam had admitted he wanted to blow himself up during the attacks, but then changed his mind.
Salah Abdeslam’s lawyer has filed a legal complaint against the prosecutor for violating secrecy.
Sven Mary also said he would continue to fight a transfer to France, but added: “Let’s be quite clear. He’s going to France – there is no single reason that he won’t go to France. It’ll be the investigating judge who decides when he goes.”
Salah Abdeslam has revealed he wanted to blow himself up but then changed his mind, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins says.
The 26-year-old Paris attacks suspect has been charged with terrorism offences in Belgium a day after he was seized in a dramatic raid.
Salah Abdeslam will fight extradition to France but has been co-operating with police, his lawyer says.
The Paris attacks on November 13 left 130 people dead and dozens injured.
ISIS said it was behind the bombings and shootings.
Salah Abdeslam is charged with participation in terrorist murder and the activities of a terrorist group, Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office says.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference: “Salah Abdeslam today during questioning by [Belgian] investigators affirmed that, and I quote, <<he wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France and that he had backed down>>.”
Salah Abdeslam’s assertions should be treated with caution, the prosecutor added.
The French national, born in Belgium, is in custody following his arrest in Brussels on March 18 after four months on the run.
Investigators hope Salah Abdeslam, who was shot in the leg during his arrest, will reveal more information about the ISIS network behind the Paris attacks, its financing and plans.
They believe he helped with logistics, including renting rooms and driving suicide bombers to the Stade de France.
Salah Abdeslam is believed to have fled shortly after the attacks, returning to the Molenbeek district of Brussels.
Interpol has meanwhile urged “extra vigilance” at borders following yesterday’s raid in Brussels, saying more accomplices may try to flee Europe.
The subject of a massive manhunt, Salah Abdeslam was arrested about 1,600ft from his home in Molenbeek. His brother, Brahim, was one of the Paris attackers, who blew himself up.
Another man arrested at the same time as Salah Abdeslam on March 18, Monir Ahmed Alaaj, has also been charged with participation in terrorist murder and the activities of a terrorist group, the Belgian prosecutors say.
Yesterday’s raid also saw three members of a family detained.
They include Abid Aberkan, described as a friend of Abdeslam, who has been charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist organization and harboring criminals.
Another family member, identified as Djemila M, has been charged with harboring criminals, but is not in custody, the prosecutor’s office says.
Abid Aberkan’s mother, Sihane, has been freed and faces no charges.
The raid came after Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in a flat in another Brussels district, Forest, raided on March 15.
Dramatic footage showed Salah Abdeslam being bundled into a police car on March 18 after a volley of gunfire. Monir Ahmed Alaaj was also injured during the arrests, but both suspects were discharged from hospital on March 19.
France’s President Francois Hollande said Salah Abdeslam’s arrest was “an important moment”.
Prosecutors said Monir Ahmed Alaaj had travelled with Salah Abdeslam to Germany last October, where his fingerprints were taken during an identity check.
A false Syrian passport in Monir Ahmed Alaaj’s name and Belgian identity papers under an alias were found in a flat in Forest raided on March 15.
More details have meanwhile emerged about an Algerian national, Mohamed Belkaid, shot dead in March 15 raid.
Associated Press says it has been passed documents by the Syrian opposition news site, Zaman al-Wasl, suggesting he joined ISIS in 2014 and asked to be a suicide bomber.
Belgian investigators say he is likely to have been an associate of Salah Abdeslam.
Along with the Stade de France, the Paris bombings and shootings targeted the Bataclan concert hall and bars and restaurants.
Officials have identified most of the people they believe to have carried out the assaults and on March 18 Francois Hollande predicted that more arrests could follow.
Most of the suspects either died during the attacks or were killed in subsequent police raids.
Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in last year’s Paris attacks, has been wounded and arrested in a raid in Brussels, Belgian officials have said.
According to officials, Salah Abdeslam, who had been on the run since the November attacks, was wounded in the leg as police moved in on a flat in the Molenbeek area.
“We got him,” said Theo Francken, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration.
Salah Abdeslam – one of Europe’s most wanted men – is a key suspect in the jihadist attacks in Paris which 130 people died.
Belgian PM Charles Michel had to urgently leave an EU-Turkey summit as details of the operation began to emerge.
The raid apparently continued late into the evening, as two more explosions were reported recently at the scene.
Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in a Brussels flat that was raided on March 15.
One man – identified as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid and linked to the Paris attacks – was shot dead during the raid in the southern Forest suburb on March 15.
Officials said at the time they believed as many as two other suspects may have escaped.
Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national born in Brussels, had lived in Molenbeek before the November 13 attacks.
He is believed to have returned to Belgium immediately after the attacks, in which his brother Brahim blew himself up.
In January, Belgian police said they may have found a bomb factory in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels used as a hideout by Salah Abdeslam.
Police found traces of explosives, three handmade belts and a fingerprint of the suspect.
Salah Abdeslam has been the subject of a massive manhunt since the attacks, claimed by ISIS militants.
Officials have identified most of the people they believe to have carried out the assaults.
Most of the suspects either died during the attacks or were killed in subsequent police raids.
Parts of Brussels were sealed off for days after the Paris massacre amid fears of a major incident. A number of suspected attackers lived in the Belgian capital.
Footage of the fugitive Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam are said to have emerged, according to French news channel BFM TV.
The images were captured on the morning of November 14 by CCTV cameras at a French petrol station, a day after the attacks in which 130 were killed.
In them, Salah Abdeslam seems relaxed, walking with his hands in his pockets.
Salah Abdeslam is thought to have been in charge of logistics for the groups of gunmen who carried out the attacks.
He is said to have called his two friends, Mohammed Amri and Salah Hamza Attou, from Paris early on November 14 to come and pick him up and take him to Belgium.
En route from Paris to Brussels, the three men stopped at a petrol station near the Belgian border for about 15 minutes, where a CCTV camera filmed them, BFM reports.
Photo Reuters
At that point, the three men had already been through three police checks, but had not been stopped as Salah Abdeslam had not yet been connected to the Paris attacks.
Mohammed Amri and Salah Hamza Attou later dropped off Salah Abdeslam in the district of Laeken in Brussels.
The two were arrested in Molenbeek the next day and face terror charges, while Salah Abdeslam is still on the run.
The Paris attacks are believed to have been at least partly planned in Brussels. Belgian police have arrested 10 people as part of their investigation.
The suspected ringleader was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national. He and his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen died in a fierce gun battle five days after the attacks, when police raided a flat in Paris where they were hiding, heavily armed.
France is voting in regional elections, the first electoral test since last month’s Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed.
According to opinion polls, there will be a strong showing for the far-right National Front (FN).
The center-right led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to win in most regions at the expense of the governing Socialist Party.
December 6 first round will be followed by a run-off on December 13.
French regions have wide powers over local transport, education and economic development.
The election is also being closely watched after opinion polls suggested the popularity of the anti-immigration, anti-EU National Front had increased since the attacks on November 13.
National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen is likely to win in the northern region of Nord-Pas-De-Calais-Picardie, while her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen is a leading contender in Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur in the south.
It would be the first time the FN has captured any of France’s regions. The party is hoping a strong performance will boost Marine Le Pen’s chances for the 2017 presidential election.
Both Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Republicains party and the FN appear to be heading for about 30% of votes, according to opinion polls, but President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party is trailing on about 22%.
PM Manuel Valls made an “appeal to patriotism” on December 3 in an effort to rally the Socialist vote.
The election is being held under a state of emergency which was declared after the Paris attacks.
On December 4, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said police were seeking two new suspects accused of aiding the fugitive suspect from the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam, who lived in Belgium.
They are “armed and dangerous” and are thought to have helped Salah Abdeslam travel to Hungary in September.
Investigators say Salah Abdeslam may have driven the suicide bombers at the Stade de France to their target on the night of the Paris attacks.
However, Salah Abdeslam’s precise role in the attacks remains unclear. There are suggestions he was meant to carry out a suicide attack on the night but decided against it.
French and Belgian police are seeking two new suspects accused of aiding the fugitive suspect from the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam, the federal prosecutor’s office says.
The two suspects are “armed and dangerous” and are thought to have helped Salah Abdeslam travel to Hungary in September.
Investigators say Salah Abdeslam may have driven the suicide bombers at the Stade de France to their target on the night of the Paris attacks.
The November 13 attacks left 130 people dead and more than 350 wounded.
Salah Abdeslam was stopped at the Hungary-Austria border in September accompanied by two men with fake IDs bearing the names Soufiane Kayal and Samir Bouzid, Belgian police said.
“The Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the investigating judge wish to appeal to the public again to look out for two new suspects the investigators are actively searching for,” the Belgian prosecutor’s statement said.
Salah Abdeslam’s precise role in the attacks remains unclear. There are suggestions he was meant to carry out a suicide attack on the night but decided against it.
The name Soufiane Kayal was used to rent a house searched in November after the Paris attacks.
The identity card of Samir Bouzid was used to transfer money to Hasna Aitboulahcen, the cousin of attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, four days after the attacks, police said.
Both Hasna Aitboulahcen and Abdelhamid Abaaoud were killed in a police raid on the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, along with a third, as-yet unidentified person.
On December 4, the Paris cafe La Bonne Biere became the first of the venues targeted during the co-ordinated assaults to reopen its doors.
Metro and schools in Belgian capital Brussels are due to reopen after they were shut four days ago in a security lockdown following the Paris attacks.
However, Brussels remains on the highest alert level, with hundreds of armed police and soldiers on patrol.
Authorities fear Paris-style attacks may be carried out, as at least one Paris gunman had lived in Brussels.
France says 130 people died in a series of attacks in Paris. At least one suspected attacker is still at large.
ISIS says it carried out the attacks.
Five people have been charged in Belgium with terrorism offences in connection with the attacks in Paris.
In Brussels, public transport was due to start running again from Wednesday morning though some metro lines will remain closed.
Yesterday, an arrest warrant was issued in Belgium for a man named Mohamed Abrini over the attacks.
French prosecutors say that two days before the attacks, he was seen driving a car with suspect Salah Abdeslam at a petrol station on the motorway to Paris.
Mohamed Abrini is described as “dangerous and probably armed”.
Salah Abdeslam is currently the subject of an international manhunt after the attacks.
The Renault Clio that Mohamed Abrini was seen driving was later used in the attacks, prosecutors say. Police say he should not be approached by the public.
Belgian prosecutors also said on November 24 that they had partially identified two other men taken into custody.
The men, named as Ali O and Lazez A, are both from the Brussels district of Molenbeek, and both will appear separately in court during the course of this week.
A suicide bomb belt was found on a Paris street following attacks that killed 130 people on November 13.
It is said to resemble belts used by the attackers and was found in a suburb which a suspect is thought to have passed through after the attacks, French police say.
Meanwhile, the US Department of State has issued a worldwide travel alert in response to Paris attacks.
The Belgian capital Brussels remains on high alert. Schools and the metro will stay closed on November 24.
Photo Getty Images
They are due to reopen on November 25 but the highest alert level will continue for at least another week.
Authorities fear attacks like those in Paris may be carried out in Brussels, where at least one Paris attacker lived. Belgian PM Charles Michel warned that the threat remained “imminent”.
French President Francois Hollande is due to meet President Barack Obama in Washington on November 24 as he continues a busy week of international diplomacy during which he will meet all other permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The suspected explosives belt was found in a dustbin on November 23 by street cleaners in the Montrouge district, police say.
Police sources told news agencies it resembled those used in the November 13 attacks. According to AFP news agency, the device lacks a detonator.
It is one of two key pieces of evidence discovered by French police and publicly linked to Salah Abdeslam, one of the main suspects.
Salah Abdeslam’s brother, Brahim, blew himself up during the attacks.
A mobile phone was previously found in an abandoned car he rented. Phone data suggest that on the night of the attacks, Salah Abdeslam was in the area where the belt was later found.
It may be that he planned to detonate the bomb belt but abandoned the plan – either because the belt was malfunctioning or, as his brother Mohamed has suggested, because he had a last-minute change of heart.
A massive manhunt for Salah Abdeslam is continuing in both France and Belgium.
Sixteen suspects have been arrested in Brussels anti-terror raids, but suspected Paris attacks gunman Salah Abdeslam remains at large, Belgian authorities have said.
Some 22 raids were carried out on November 22 across Brussels and Charleroi, the federal prosecutor’s spokesman said.
Brussels remains on the highest level of terror alert. Universities, schools and the metro system will stay closed on November 23.
More than 130 died and 350 were injured in the Paris attacks 10 days ago.
Police fired two shots at a car during an operation in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, injuring one suspect who was later arrested.
Photo Reuters
No weapons or explosives were found during the searches on November 22, spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told a news conference.
French President Francois Hollande said France planned to intensify its air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria.
“We will intensify our strikes, choosing targets that will do the most damage possible to this army of terrorists,” Francois Hollande said.
He kicks off a week of diplomatic efforts to rally support to crush the group: after meeting UK PM David Cameron on November 23, he will meet President Barack Obama on November 24, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on November 25 and Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 26.
The French government says the aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, will be operational in the Mediterranean on November 23 and ready to act against ISIS militants in Syria.
Brussels has been on lockdown all weekend amid a manhunt for Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of being among the assailants who killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.
Brussels is extending the highest level of terror alert because of the “serious and imminent” threat of Paris-style attacks, Belgium’s PM Charles Michel has announced.
The prime minister added that universities, schools and the metro would stay shut.
Belgium’s capital has been on lockdown all weekend, amid a manhunt for suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam.
ISIS militants, some of them from Brussels, killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.
Security forces completed several operations in Brussels on Sunday night, the AFP news agency reports. The police had urged the public not to report its movements on social media.
On November 22, PM Charles Michel told reporters in Brussels that the authorities fear “an attack similar to the one in Paris, with several individuals who could also possibly launch several attacks at the same time in multiple locations”.
Photo EPA
Earlier, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the danger to Belgium was not tied to Salah Abdeslam alone.
“The threat is broader than the one suspected terrorist,” he told Flemish broadcaster VRT.
It was not clear if Jan Jambon was referring to those involved in the Paris attacks, or others who might be planning attacks in Belgium.
Soldiers joined police officers on patrols in Brussels over the weekend. Many public spaces in the usually bustling capital were deserted, as people heeded official warnings to avoid crowds.
The Belgian authorities have so far charged three people with involvement in the Paris attacks, claimed by ISIS.
French media have reported that nine militants carried out the attacks, and seven died on the same night.
One of the men who drove Salah Abdeslam to Belgium told his lawyer that he was dressed in a “big jacket” and may have had a suicide belt.
The lawyer, Carine Couquelet, told French TV this raised questions, including the possibility that Salah Abdeslam may have been supposed to blow himself up in Paris but had had second thoughts.
Friends of Salah Abdeslam told ABC News they had spoken to him on Skype and said he was hiding in Brussels and desperately trying to get to Syria.
They said Salah Abdeslam was caught between European authorities hunting him and ISIS members who were “watching him” and were unhappy that he had not detonated his suicide belt.
According to French officials, a total of 23 people have been arrested and dozens of weapons seized in a series of raids on suspected Islamist militants across France following last week’s attacks in Paris.
A police operation is also reportedly under way in Brussels, Belgium, with reports that one suspect was arrested.
France’s PM Manuel Valls said the attacks were organized from Syria.
He added that the authorities believed new terror attacks were being planned in France and other European countries.
Meanwhile two more Paris attackers were named, along with five already identified. One is confirmed to have entered Greece as a migrant earlier this year.
France is to hold a nationwide minute of silence at midday local time for the victims.
Police have named Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, 26, as a key suspect, and a manhunt is under way. He was reportedly stopped by officers in the wake of the attacks but then let go.
Meanwhile, French aircraft have attacked Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria.
ISIS has said it carried out the attacks in the French capital.
Manuel 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.
Manuel Valls said more than 150 raids on militant targets had been carried out in different areas of France on November 16.
Photo AP
“We are making use of the legal framework of the state of emergency to question people who are part of the radical jihadist movement… and all those who advocate hate of the republic,” he said.
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.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 23 people were arrested and dozens of weapons seized, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and rocket launchers. More than 100 have been placed under house arrest.
Seven attackers died in the assault on the French capital, most of them after detonating suicide belts.
Five were identified over the weekend.
On November 16, another two were named by the Paris prosecutor as Ahmad al-Mohammad and Samy Amimour.
Ahmad Al-Mohammad is the name on a Syrian passport found with the remains of one of the attackers, though the man’s identity has not yet been verified. What has been confirmed is that his fingerprints match those taken by the Greek authorities after he arrived with migrants on the island of Leros in October 2015.
Samy Amimour was said to be facing terrorism charges in France. He was placed under judicial supervision while under investigation for terrorist conspiracy – he planned to go to Yemen. An international arrest warrant was issued against him when he broke bail in autumn 2013. Three of his relatives were among those detained this morning.
One of the main lines of investigation concerns Molenbeek, which has a reputation as being a haven for jihadists. One of Salah Abdeslam’s brothers, Mohammed, was reportedly arrested there when he returned from Paris.
He remains in custody. Belgian police say they have made a total of seven arrests.
Belgium’s PM Charles Michel said the Belgian authorities would crack down on Molenbeek.
France is currently marking a second day of national mourning. A state of emergency declared by President Francois Hollande remains in force. Thousands of extra police and troops are on the streets of Paris.
French citizen Salah Abdeslam is wanted in connection with the attacks in Paris that left 129 people dead on November 13.
Police have issued a photograph of Salah Abdeslam, 26, is describing him as dangerous.
Seven attackers, two of whom had lived in Belgium, died during a series of assaults in Paris, officials said.
On November 15, French aircraft struck the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, hitting four targets, France’s defense ministry said.
Ten fighter jets operating out of French bases in Jordan and the UAE dropped 20 guided bombs on a command centre, recruitment centre for jihadists, a munitions depot and a training camp for fighters, the ministry said.
The attack was carried out in co-ordination with US forces.
President Francois Hollande had described the attacks in Paris as an act of war – and promised that France’s reaction would be pitiless.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the attacks had been prepared “by a group of individuals based in Belgium” who had “benefited from accomplices in France”.
The attackers targeted restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France, the country’s main sports stadium.
Paris hospitals have said the official number of dead – not including attackers – remains at 129 people.
Photo Police Nationale
France is marking three days of national mourning. On Sunday, a memorial service was held at Notre Dame cathedral.
Meanwhile panic broke out at the Place de la Republique, where hundreds of people had gathered to honor the victims.
Crowds ran over flowers and candles. Police – who cleared the square – later said people may have mistaken the sound of firecrackers for gunfire.
On November 15, the discovery of a suspected getaway car in Montreuil, east of Paris, fuelled suspicion that at least one suspect had escaped.
French police appealed for information about Salah Abdelslam but warned people not to approach him. Unnamed officials said he was one of three brothers linked to the attack.
The Seat car found in Montreuil is believed to have been used by gunmen who opened fire on people in restaurants on November 13, police say.
A number of AK47 rifles were found in the car, French media quote judicial sources as saying.
The Seat and a VW Polo used by the attackers were rented in Belgium. The Polo was found near the Bataclan concert venue, where 89 people were killed.
One of the Paris attackers lived in Brussels and another in the nearby town of Molenbeek, Belgian prosecutors said on Sunday, without naming either.
A total of seven men had been arrested in Molenbeek, they added. Not all are being held in direct connection with the Paris attacks.
A brother of Salah Abdelslam was said to be among them, while another brother is reported to be one of the seven dead attackers.
The only dead attacker to be named so far is a 29-year-old Frenchman, Ismail Omar Mostefai.
Ismail Omar Mostefai had a criminal record and had been flagged up as a possible Islamist extremist by French intelligence.
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