A Belgian police officer guards the building of the European Commission in Brussels
French authorities yesterday questioned a top suspect linked to attackers who terrorized Paris, while Belgium’s capital remained locked down under threat of a possible similar attack.
Jawad Bendaoud, the only person in France facing potential terrorism charges linked to the Nov. 13 Paris attacks was handed over yesterday morning to an anti-terrorism judge in Paris, according to a judicial official. Bendaoud was detained last week for providing lodging to the suspected mastermind of the attacks in an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.
Bendaoud, 29, told BFM television, “I didn’t know they were terrorists. I was asked to do a favor. I did a favor, sir.”
He would be either charged or released yesterday.
Four people have been handed terrorism charges in Belgium since the Paris attacks, which have been traced to a network of people with ties to both France and Belgium.
Brussels remained at its highest alert level yesterday, after Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel cited a “serious and imminent threat” to the city, which houses the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. Belgium’s crisis center said the alert level would only change if a significant breakthrough warranted it.
Increased security measures in the wake of the massacre in Paris have virtually shut down the Belgian capital, with the subway system, many shops and schools remaining shut. Michel said that despite the continued high-alert level, schools would reopen today.
Many questions remain unanswered as investigators try to piece together what happened and who might still be at large.
Only one fugitive has been publicly named: Salah Abdeslam, who crossed into Belgium the morning after the attacks.
A street cleaner in a Paris suburb found an explosive vest Monday near the place where Abdeslam’s cellphone was found, raising the possibility that he aborted his mission, either ditching a malfunctioning vest or fleeing in fear.
Authorities said the device, which did not have a detonator, was in a pile of rubble in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge. A police official said the vest contained bolts and the same type of explosive used in the Nov. 13 attacks that claimed 130 lives and left hundreds wounded. Nicolas Vaux-Montagny and Maria Cheng, Paris, AP
No Comments