Belgium orders trial for terror suspect Abdeslam over shootout

Belgium orders Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam to stand trial over a shootout in Brussels last year with Belgian and French police officers who had been tracking Europe’s most wanted man for four months.

Abdeslam, who has ties to Islamic State and is the sole surviving alleged assailant in the November 2015 Paris massacre, was arrested three days after the shootout on March 15 last year in which several officers were wounded.

Judges on Thursday order Abdeslam, 27, and his alleged accomplice Sofiane Ayari, 24, to stand trial in Brussels criminal court, the federal prosecutor’s office says.

The two will be tried for “attempted murder on several police officers in a terrorist context” and “carrying banned weapons in a terrorist context,” the office says in a statement.

A French woman police officer and Belgian colleagues were wounded at the Forest neighborhood apartment in which an Algerian Islamist suspect was killed.

After finding Abdeslam’s fingerprints in the apartment, they arrested him and Ayari during a raid on March 18, 2016 in the gritty Brussels immigrant neighbourhood of Molenbeek, shooting Abdeslam in the leg.

Investigators suspect that Abdeslam’s arrest precipitated the attacks in Brussels four days later by suicide bombers linked to him as they feared they, too, would be captured before they could carry out their plot.

— AFP