Terror suspect Salah Abdeslam—the only surviving individual who is believed to have helped carry out the Nov. 13 Paris jihadist attacks—has been wounded and arrested in a law-enforcement operation in Brussels, Belgium’s justice minister says. From the Guardian:
“We got him,” the Belgian justice minister told reporters, confirming reports in the Belgian press that Abdeslam had been caught alive.
Abdeslam may have narrowly escaped a raid that made headlines earlier this week:
The Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt confirmed that Abdeslam’s fingerprints had been found at a flat that was raided in the Forest area of Brussels on Tuesday, where a shoot-out with police saw another gunman shot dead next to an Islamic State flag. Two suspects fled that raid.
A 26-year-old Belgian-born French national, Abdeslam is known to have rented a Volkswagen used by the attackers who massacred concertgoers at the Bataclan theater. He also may have dropped off suicide bombers outside the Stade de France stadium and possibly abandoned plans to carry out a suicide bombing himself.
Abdeslam’s brother Ibrahim blew himself up at a café during the attack.
Salah Abdeslam was in a car that was stopped early in the morning after the attacks near the Belgian border but wasn’t detained because he hadn’t yet been identified as a suspect.
