PARIS — The lone known surviving suspect in the Paris attacks was returned Wednesday to the city where Islamic State terrorists unleashed a night of mayhem, and he was charged with a host of terrorism offenses, raising hopes that he may be able to help French investigators trace the pathways of Islamic State fighters thought to be hiding out in Europe.
Salah Abdeslam was whisked in secretly by helicopter after being transferred from the prison cell in Belgium where he had been held since his capture last month. His lawyer, Frank Berton, described a “muscular operation” that had caught even the attorney by surprise, causing him to rush to join his client at Paris’ Palace of Justice.
The 26-year-old faces preliminary charges of participating in a terrorist organization, terrorist murders and attempted murders, attempted terrorist murders of public officials, hostage-taking, and possessing weapons and explosives, French prosecutors said in a statement.
Berton said Abdeslam was being sent to Fleury-Merogis, a massive, high-security prison 19 miles south of Paris, where he will be held in isolation in a special camera-equipped cell until his next hearing on May 20. French Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas said earlier that Abdeslam would be placed in isolation, watched by guards specially trained to deal with “people reputed to be dangerous.”
The return of the last known survivor of the team that carried out the Nov. 13 attacks may help investigators untangle some of the still-unresolved questions about the assault, which claimed 130 lives at cafes, a music hall and a sports stadium. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the carnage.
Berton told reporters Wednesday that his client “volunteered that he would explain himself at some later date.”
Abdeslam, a French citizen of Moroccan origin, spent four months on the run following the attacks and a month in Belgian custody after being tackled by heavily armed police outside his hideout in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels.
Abdeslam’s precise role in the attacks has never been clear. The Paris prosecutor said he was kitted out as a suicide bomber, but abandoned his plans and fled to Belgium. Abdeslam’s older brother blew himself up that night at a cafe.
It was at the hideout, near his childhood home in Molenbeek, that Abdeslam was ultimately captured March 18. His detention may have prompted other members of the Islamic State cell to rush attack plans already in motion. Four days later, suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the Brussels airport and metro, killing 32 people. Abdeslam had told interrogators nothing about a new plot.
His return to Paris offered solace to victims of the Nov. 13 bloodshed and raised hopes that French investigators would finally be able to trace the pathways of the Islamic State fighters thought to be hiding out in Europe.
But in a surprising assessment, Abdeslam’s Belgian lawyer downplayed any insight from his client, dismissing him as a “little jerk among Molenbeek’s little delinquents, more a follower than a leader.”
“He has the intelligence of an empty ashtray,” the attorney, Sven Mary, told the French newspaper Liberation.
