Salah Abdeslam, Suspect in Paris Attacks, Is Captured in Brussels
By STEVEN ERLANGER and ALISSA J. RUBIN

BRUSSELS — He traveled back to Belgium unrecognized and unchallenged the day after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. His fingerprints were found in two apartments in Brussels in subsequent months, but he kept eluding the police dragnet, amid speculation that he might have escaped to Syria.

But late Friday afternoon, the Belgian authorities finally managed to hunt down the most wanted man in Europe: Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the sole surviving participant in the Paris attacks.

With heavily armed officers closing in on him, Mr. Abdeslam stumbled onto a street in the Brussels neighborhood where he had grown up, reportedly brandishing a handgun, before being shot in the knee and trundled away by the police.

The capture was the biggest breakthrough in the case since the days immediately after the attack, which killed 130 people and wounded more than 400 others in the deadliest terrorist violence in Western Europe since 2004.

It could give security and intelligence agencies an opportunity to interrogate Mr. Abdeslam about his ties to the Islamic State and how the attacks were planned and carried out, at a time when officials are saying that the Paris plot might have been larger and more elaborate than first thought.

He was arrested three days after the police found his fingerprints in an apartment in another Brussels neighborhood. The authorities gave few details about how they had tracked him down, but the Belgian prosecutor’s office said it had also arrested three members of a family on charges of sheltering him.

The capture concluded what had been a frustrating hunt for Mr. Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French citizen of Moroccan ancestry who is thought to have driven the car that carried a team of terrorists to the French national soccer stadium outside Paris on Nov. 13. Mr. Abdeslam’s brother Ibrahim blew himself up as a member of a separate team of attackers in Paris.

“This evening is a huge success in the battle against terrorism,” Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said at a news conference with President François Hollande of France.

Mr. Hollande said he would request the extradition of Mr. Abdeslam to face trial in France. “Although this arrest is an important step, it is not the final conclusion,” he said, appearing alongside Mr. Michel after the two leaders received a congratulatory phone call from President Obama.

“We must catch all those who enabled, organized or facilitated these attacks, and we are realizing that they are much more numerous than we had originally thought and identified,” Mr. Hollande said.

Mr. Hollande said the authorities would continue to pursue connections between the Paris attackers and other Islamic State militants.

Of the 10 men believed to have participated directly in the Paris attacks, Mr. Abdeslam was the only one who was at large. The rest died in the attacks or soon afterward.

The operation on Friday began around 4:30 p.m., when the police raided three locations simultaneously, two in Molenbeek, where Mr. Abdeslam had grown up, and one in another neighborhood, Jette. Mr. Abdeslam was captured 10 minutes later after fleeing a house on the Rue des Quatre-Vents in Molenbeek.

Inside the house, the police arrested a man suspected of being an accomplice, who was slightly wounded.

That suspect — who has used the aliases Monir Ahmed Alaaj and Amine Choukri, and whose real identity is unclear — was stopped in Ulm, Germany, with Mr. Abdeslam on Oct. 3, the police said, and the suspect’s fingerprints matched prints found after the Paris attacks in a safe house in Auvelais, a town in Belgium.

About four hours after the arrests of Mr. Abdeslam and the man thought to be his accomplice, and after further gunfire and explosions, the police arrested the three members of the family that they believe had helped hide Mr. Abdeslam.

Eric Van der Sijpt, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor in Brussels, said it was possible Mr. Abdeslam had spent “days, weeks or months” in the area.

The raids on the other two locations turned up empty.

As the police operation unfolded, Molenbeek filled with journalists and angry onlookers, who have protested what they consider unfair and heavy-handed interrogations by the police since the November attacks.

But other residents welcomed the capture.

Christophe Van Damme, a contractor who lives yards from where Mr. Abdeslam was apprehended, said heavily armed officers had jumped from vehicles pouring into the neighborhood late in the afternoon. He said he then heard 10 to 15 gunshots.

“When everything was O.K., people were leaning out their windows, applauding the police,” he said.

Michel Eylenbosch, the chairman of the Molenbeek City Council, expressed relief at Mr. Abdeslam’s arrest and said there was “now the possibility to have big steps in this case.”

Over the past four months, the French and Belgian police have raided dozens of buildings, scooped up troves of documents and questioned scores of suspects as part of their investigation into the attacks and Mr. Abdeslam’s whereabouts.

The turning point in the case appears to have been on Tuesday, when the authorities raided a home on the Rue du Dries in the Forest section of Brussels, as part of an effort to collect more intelligence.

That raid, which yielded Mr. Abdeslam’s fingerprints, did not begin as an attempt to capture him.

The French and Belgian officers who conducted the raid on Tuesday were surprised to find the residence occupied. They immediately came under fire, and in the ensuing gunfight, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Mr. Abdeslam — Mohamed Belkaid, 35 — was shot dead. Four police officers were slightly wounded.

But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom might have been Mr. Abdeslam.

It was the second time the authorities had found Mr. Abdeslam’s fingerprints in an apartment in Brussels. In December a fingerprint of his was found in an apartment in the Schaerbeek section, along with material that might have been used to make suicide belts.

Belgian prosecutors said Friday that the Algerian man killed in the raid, Mr. Belkaid, was “most probably” a man who had helped the Paris attackers. Mr. Belkaid had been using fake Belgian identity papers in the name Samir Bouzid.

A man traveling under that name had been previously identified as one of two men in a car with Mr. Abdeslam in September as the three drove between Hungary and Austria. After the attacks, someone using that name wired 750 euros, about $845, to a cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the on-the-ground organizer of the attacks. (Mr. Abaaoud and his cousin died in a police raid outside Paris on Nov. 18.)

Before the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam had several brushes with the law, mainly for minor offenses. In 2010, he served time in a Belgian prison with Mr. Abaaoud, who also lived in Molenbeek.

A week before the attacks, the Belgian authorities shut down a bar and cafe that Ibrahim Abdeslam operated because the two brothers were suspected of selling drugs.

In September, Salah Abdeslam drove to Budapest, where he picked up two men who returned with him to Belgium with fake identity cards. The following month he was stopped in Ulm, near Stuttgart, Germany, along with the man suspected as his accomplice who was captured with him on Friday. But they were not detained.

The morning after the attacks, Mr. Abdeslam was stopped on a highway in Cambrai, a French town near the Belgian border, but he was waved through.

There had been almost weekly reports by French and Belgian media organizations of Mr. Abdeslam’s whereabouts, none confirmed by the authorities.

In December it was revealed that Mr. Abdeslam may have evaded the Belgian police two days after the attacks because of an arcane law that prevented law enforcement officers from raiding a private home after 9 p.m.

Last month his fiancée was quoted in the Belgian media saying that he would rather be killed than captured.

逃亡四個多月 巴黎恐攻主嫌遭活逮

逃亡四個多月 5人栽在比利時

涉及巴黎恐怖攻擊的歐洲頭號通緝犯阿布岱斯蘭在比利時莫倫貝克落網，法國總統歐蘭德表示，將盡速向比利時申請引渡，並形容今天的逮捕成果是重要時刻，但反恐行動尚未結束。

阿布岱斯蘭在去年11月巴黎恐攻後，逃亡超過四個月，數度躲過警方緝捕；法、比兩國本周二在比利時南部福雷的一起反恐行動中，在一名被擊斃嫌犯的所在處才發現阿布岱斯蘭的指紋與DNA；18日下午在莫倫貝克的反恐行動中，阿布岱斯蘭與另一名涉及巴黎恐攻的嫌犯阿哈帝（Monir Ahmed Al Hadj）都在被圍捕中受輕傷，但關鍵要犯確定被活逮。

去年11月13日晚間在巴黎的恐怖攻擊，在法蘭西體育館外、巴特蘭戲劇院及巴黎市中心多處酒吧同時發動自殺式攻擊，共造成130人死亡，多名恐怖分子都身戴自殺腰袋引爆攻擊後自殺。

比利時檢方晚間指出，18日的行動總共逮捕五個人，除阿布岱斯蘭與另一名涉及巴黎恐攻者，另三人是涉嫌藏匿阿布岱斯蘭的家人；阿布岱斯蘭在下午4時40分被捕時，與另一名嫌犯都是腿部受輕傷，送醫治療後便開始接受調查。

法將引渡主嫌：反恐尚未結束

比利時與法國的聯合反恐行動，不但動員大批警員、反恐部隊，無人機、直升機在莫倫貝克當地上空盤旋監控，還出動不少警犬共同追捕；直到晚間6時許都還數度傳出爆炸聲，比利時官方表示，安全反恐行動將持續進行到晚間，

在確認阿布岱斯蘭被活逮後，原本在歐盟總部開高峰會的比利時總理密歇爾提早提開會場，美國總統歐巴馬事後致電祝賀歐蘭德及密歇爾。

法、比兩國領導人晚間召開聯合記者會，密歇爾表示，巴黎恐攻後，比利時已執行上百次搜索，逮捕58人，法、比兩國數周前還開會討論合作反恐，今天是為民主而戰的重要成果。

歐蘭德表示，法國將盡速向比利時申請引渡阿布岱斯蘭，並形容今天的重要時刻，同時向受害者家屬致意；但他同時表示，反恐行動尚未結束，恐怖組織的網絡仍廣泛散布在法、比及歐洲其他國家。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/world/europe/salah-abdeslam-belgium-apartment.html

Video：Dramatic video shows the moment Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the sole surviving participant in the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, is captured in Brussels.
http://nyti.ms/1MfkU9z

Video：President François Hollande of France confirmed an operation in Belgium, which led to the capture of Salah Abdeslam, a participant in the Paris terrorist attacks in November.
http://nyti.ms/1R8ZbNj

2016-03-19．聯合晚報．A1．要聞．布魯塞爾記者蕭白雪