Paris-attacks suspect reportedly planning new acts of terrorism

Associated Press

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 in the raid, and a senior Belgian police official said that 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.

Abdeslam’s Belgian lawyer, meanwhile, threatened to launch legal action today against a French prosecutor, accusing him of breaching the confidentiality of the probe into the deadly rampage in Paris.