This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/german-phone-card-shaky-id-for-paris-police-attacker/2016/01/08/a554edac-b5e7-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
Paris fugitive’s print in suspected bomb-making hideout Prosecutor: Paris fugitive hid out in suspected bomb factory
(about 5 hours later)
BRUSSELS — A Brussels apartment was likely used to make bombs for the Paris attacks, and one of the plotters also hid out there after escaping a police dragnet, Belgian prosecutors said Friday. BRUSSELS — Belgian prosecutors on Friday revealed new details about the biggest mystery in the Paris attacks: What happened to fugitive Salah Abdeslam after he ditched his car and explosive vest?
The prosecutors said they found Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprint in a search of the apartment on Dec. 10, but don’t know when he last holed up there. An international manhunt is ongoing for the 26-year-old Brussels native, whose whereabouts remain unknown. After slipping through a police dragnet, they said, he apparently hid out in the same Brussels apartment that served as the killers’ bomb factory.
The search of the apartment also turned up three suspected suicide belts, traces of the same explosive used in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people and other material that could be used to manufacture bombs, according to the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office. “We found material to make explosives, we found traces of explosives and we found three belts. So you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make the right deduction,” Belgian Federal Prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt told The Associated Press.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said authorities decided to release the information after more than a month to dispel inaccuracies published by some Belgian media. Refusing to disclose specifics, he said the evidence acquired in the apartment “has helped us get further in the investigation.” Also discovered during a Dec. 10 police search of the third-floor residence on the Rue Henri Berge: one of 26-year-old Abdeslam’s fingerprints, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced in a statement.
Van der Sypt said the third-floor apartment was likely used as a hideout after Abdeslam fled the attacks. Abdeslam, whose older brother Braham was one of the Paris suicide bombers, called for two friends to pick him up in Paris amid the bloodshed and chaos that night that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured. A Brussels native whose older brother, Brahim, was one of the Paris suicide bombers, Abdeslam is believed to have played a key logistical role in the Nov. 13 carnage in which 130 people lost their lives. Islamic State extremists have claimed responsibility for the mass killings.
“We found material to make explosives, we found traces of explosives and we found three belts. So you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make the right deduction,” Van der Sypt told The Associated Press. Early on the morning of Nov. 14, Abdeslam called two friends in Brussels to come fetch him from the French capital.
Abdeslam is believed to have played a key logistical role in the Paris carnage. A French gendarme stopped him and his two friends in their car near the border but released them. The friends are among 10 people arrested in Belgium in connection with the attacks. A French gendarme stopped the three men in their car near the border, but released them. Authorities now believe Abdeslam arrived later that same day at the apartment in the Schaerbeek district of the Belgian capital, eventually was picked up by someone else, “and we lost him,” Van der Sypt said.
Authorities now believe Abdeslam returned to the apartment, was eventually picked up by someone else “and we lost trace,” Van der Sypt said. It’s not yet clear when Abdeslam was most recently in the apartment, he said.
The apartment in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels had been rented under a false identity that may have been used by one of those who are now under arrest. Now the target of an international manhunt, Abdeslam’s whereabouts remain unknown. “If we knew where he was, we’d catch him,” said Van der Sypt. Earlier unconfirmed reports said he was spotted two days after the Paris attacks in Liege in eastern Belgium, heading toward Germany.
The prosecutor’s office said the three handmade belts discovered in the search of the residence in the Rue Henri Berge, a quiet residential street flanked on both sides by row houses, “could have been intended for the transport of explosives.” Last month, some Belgian tabloids reported he’d been smuggled Nov. 16 out of a hideout in Molenbeek, another Brussels neighborhood where he and other Paris attackers lived, by an accomplice who feigned a household move and hid him inside a piece of furniture.
Traces of the highly volatile TATP, which was packed into the suicide vests in November, were found on a piece of cloth, Van der Sypt said, as well as other material that could be used to manufacture explosives. Van der Sypt said authorities decided to release information about last month’s search to dispel inaccuracies published by some media. Refusing to disclose specifics, the prosecutor said evidence acquired in the apartment “has helped us get further in the investigation.”
He said plastic bottles cut in half and containing an unknown substance were also discovered in the apartment, and are being tested by forensic specialists. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the residence on a quiet Schaerbeek street flanked on both sides by row houses was rented under a false identity that may have been used by one of the people currently held in Belgium on suspicion of aiding and abetting the Paris attackers.
The Nov. 13 attacks marked the height of a violent year for France that began with a Jan. 7 assault on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper. That person was not identified by Belgian authorities. One of the 10 men arrested, Ali Oulkadi, a welder and restaurant deliveryman from Molenbeek, is suspected of being the person who drove Abdeslam to Schaerbeek from another district of Brussels. Detained Nov. 22, Oulkadi has been charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group and terrorist murders.
Inside the Rue Henri Berge apartment, three handmade belts were found by police, and “could have been intended for the transport of explosives,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Traces of TATP, the same highly volatile material that was packed into the suicide vests in November, were also discovered there on a piece of cloth, Van der Sypt said, as well as other material that could be used to manufacture explosives.
He said plastic bottles cut in half and containing an unknown substance were also found and seized, and were being tested by forensic specialists.
The Nov. 13 attacks marked the height of a violent year for France that began with the Jan. 7, 2015, assault on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, which was also claimed by the Islamic State group.
Paris was again jolted Thursday when a man wearing a fake explosives vest and wielding a butcher’s knife ran up to a police station and was shot to death by officers standing guard.Paris was again jolted Thursday when a man wearing a fake explosives vest and wielding a butcher’s knife ran up to a police station and was shot to death by officers standing guard.
The Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said investigators are unsure of the man’s true identity.The Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said investigators are unsure of the man’s true identity.
Molins told France-Inter radio Friday that the assailant carried a paper marked with the Muslim declaration of faith, an emblem of the Islamic State group and a name, and gave his nationality as Tunisian. Molins said he also had a phone with a German SIM card.Molins told France-Inter radio Friday that the assailant carried a paper marked with the Muslim declaration of faith, an emblem of the Islamic State group and a name, and gave his nationality as Tunisian. Molins said he also had a phone with a German SIM card.
Police are “working on the hypothesis” that the assailant is a man who was involved in a minor 2013 robbery in the southern Var region, according to a French security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.Police are “working on the hypothesis” that the assailant is a man who was involved in a minor 2013 robbery in the southern Var region, according to a French security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.
The official said that the fingerprints of the dead attacker matched those of the robbery suspect, who identified himself at the time as Ali Sallah of Casablanca, Morocco. The official said that while the fingerprints of the dead attacker matched those of the robbery suspect, who identified himself at the time as Ali Sallah of Casablanca, Morocco, the assailant in Thursday’s attack appeared older than 20.
Islamic State extremists have claimed responsibility for the January 2015 attacks and the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. On Friday, Belgian authorities said they were concerned about the possibility of new attacks in their country to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 15, 2015, police raid in the eastern city of Verviers that foiled a suspected plot by Islamic extremists. Two returnees from Syria were killed in that action, and a third arrested.
Belgian authorities said Friday they are concerned about the possibility of new attacks in their country to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 15, 2015 police raid in the eastern city of Verviers that foiled a suspected plot by Islamic extremists. Two returnees from Syria were killed in that action, and a third arrested. On Friday, OCAM, the independent agency that evaluates the probability of a violent extremist attack in Belgium, maintained the threat level at 3 on a 4-point scale, signifying such a menace is deemed “possible and likely.”
“We obviously take into account these symbolic dates, because they (the extremists) are in search of symbols,” Frederic Van Leeuw, Belgium’s chief counterterrorism prosecutor, told RTL television.“We obviously take into account these symbolic dates, because they (the extremists) are in search of symbols,” Frederic Van Leeuw, Belgium’s chief counterterrorism prosecutor, told RTL television.
______
Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant and Philippe Sotto in Paris and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed. Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant and Philippe Sotto in Paris and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.