New suspect Mohamed Abrini being hunted over Paris attacks

Hunted: Mohamed Abrini is wanted by Belgian police over the Paris attacks
EPA/Belgian Federal Police
Jason Collie24 November 2015

Belgian authorities have charged a fifth suspect with terror offences relating to the Paris attacks.

The federal prosecutor’s office also issued an international warrant for Mohamed Abrini, who is being tracked by both Belgian and French police.

Authorities are looking for Abrini because he was seen with fugitive Salah Abdeslam at a petrol station in Ressons, on the highway to Paris, two days before the November 13 attacks.

They said that Abrini was driving the Renault Clio used in the attacks in Paris on November 13 that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others.

An accompanying police wanted poster described Abrini as “dangerous and probably armed”.

Spotted: Mohamed Abrini, who is wanted in connection with the Paris terror attacks, seen at a petrol station in Ressons, France, on November 11
EPA/Belgian Federal Police

The prosecutor said he had been filmed with Abdeslam around 7pm on Wednesday, November 11, at Ressons on the Paris-Brussels motorway.

The prosecutor also gave details of two people previously charged with terrorist offences and said that a fifth, unnamed, person had been charged on Tuesday.

The only two people facing charges who had previously been named were Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou.

They admit to driving from Brussels to Paris to fetch Abdeslam hours after Abdeslam’s brother had blown himself up during the attacks. However they deny any knowledge of what Abdeslam had been doing in France.

The prosecutor said a French citizen named as Ali O, 31, living in the Molenbeek district of Brussels and arrested on Sunday, had picked Abdeslam up in a car after Amri and Attou brought him back to Brussels on November 14.

A 39-year-old Moroccan named Lazez A, detained last week and also resident in western Brussels, was the fourth person to be charged in Belgium

Police found two handguns and traces of blood in his car, the prosecutor said in the statement.

On Tuesday, a fifth, unidentified, person was charged, the statement added. Two other people arrested at the same time on Monday had been released.

Meanwhile, attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud returned to the area where gunmen and suicide bombers had earlier murdered people in cafes and bars, the Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

Molins said Abdelhamid Abaaoud boarded a metro going back to the centre of Paris and the phone he was believed to be using was detected in the 10th, 11th and 12th districts, and by the Bataclan concert hall while attacks there were still under way.

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