Brussels (Belgium) : Arrested Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam ‘s lawyer, Sven Mary, has said that the former is no longer cooperating with the Belgian Police and wants to be extradited to France as soon as possible.
The Belgian Police had captured Abdeslam during a raid in Molenbeek, an impoverished suburb of Brussels, Belgium last Friday.
The Belgium-born French citizen was shot after he tried to escape his parent’s home Molenbeek and was shortly arrested.
Mary said Abdeslam had initially cooperated with the investigators but was fighting extradition, reports CNN.
Investigators suspect that Abdeslam was probably going to be part of an attack being planned by the ISIS that carried out blasts in Brussels airport and in the city’s metro.
Abdeslam said that he did not know about the plans.
Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw identified Ibrahim El Bakraoui as one of two suicide bombers at the Brussels airport and his brother, Khalid El Bakraoui, as the man behind a deadly suicide blast about an hour later on a train near the Maelbeek metro station.
Meanwhile, a court hearing in Brussels on Abdeslam’s detention has been postponed till April 7.
Earlier in the day, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol has warned that Brussels attacks showed that a network of at least 5,000 terrorists suspects were more dangerous than previously feared.
Confirming that there is a connection of the Brussels bombers to November’s attacks in Paris, Head of Europol, Rob Wainwright warned of new aggressive strategy of attacks by Islamic State, reports the Guardian. (ANI)