Iraq News

Paris attacks suspect charged over Brussels suicide bombings

Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect in the November 2015 Paris attacks, has been formally charged in connection with the subsequent Brussels suicide bombings, federal prosecutors said Monday (August 12th).

Abdeslam was charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group", the federal prosecutor's office told AFP.

The prosecutor's office did not give details of his alleged role in the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22nd, 2016, which killed 32 people and wounded 340 others.

The "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks which occurred within an hour of each other.

Investigators say the attacks were ordered from Syria and organised by a French-Belgian cell in Brussels, which was also behind the November 13th, 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others.

In April, a Belgian court sentenced Abdeslam to 20 years in prison over a gun battle with police in Brussels that led to his capture days before the Brussels suicide bombings.

Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national, is being held in jail in France pending a separate trial over the Paris attacks.

He is alleged to have dropped off three suicide bombers at a Paris sports stadium the evening of the November attacks before abandoning a suicide belt he was apparently going to detonate.

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