Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam will not fight his extradition to France, his lawyer said at a court hearing in Brussels today.
Abdeslam's lawyer, Sven Mary, said he had changed his mind and was willing to be returned to France. Abdeslam does not want to collaborate with Belgian police, Mary said.
Abdeslam’s arrest last Friday for his alleged involvement in the Paris attacks in November is thought to have precipitated this week’s attacks, which were perpetrated by three suicide bombers -- whom police have now identified as Najim Laachraoui and brothers Ibrahim El-Bakraoui and Khalid El-Bakraoui -- and a fourth suspect who remains at large.
“These attacks must have been in the planning stages for several months, and I think if the cells thought that they may be under investigation, that could prompt them to carry them out more quickly,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday.
Ibrahim El-Bakraoui, who executed the attack on Brussels Airport along with Laachraoui and the unnamed suspect still on the loose, allegedly left behind a written statement on a laptop that was discovered near an apartment where he was picked up by a taxi the morning of the attacks. The laptop was found in a trashcan on the same street as the apartment.
Belgian prosecutors have described the note as being a “testament.”
“The note included mentions of ‘being in a rush,’ ‘no longer knowing what to do,’ ‘being sought everywhere,’ ‘no longer being safe,’ and that if he takes too much time, he risks finishing his life ‘next to him’ in a jail cell,” an official said.
It is not clear whom El-Bakraoui is referring to as “him” in the note.
However, the note has been used in support of theories that Abdeslam’s arrest accelerated the attacks.
On Sunday, less than two days before the latest attacks, ABC News reported that Abdeslam allegedly told interrogators he was planning new operations and “was ready to restart something from Brussels,” Belgium’s foreign minister Didier Reynders said.
Reynders added that investigators had “found a lot of weapons” and “have seen a new network of people around him [Abdeslam] in Brussels.”
"We have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure that there are others," Reynders said.
Abdeslam, who was captured in the Brussels district of Molenbeek on Friday after five months on the run, allegedly told investigators that he originally planned to commit a suicide bombing at France’s main stadium in the Paris attacks, but then “backtracked” and abandoned his explosive belt, Paris prosecutor Francois Mollins said Saturday.
Abdeslam was supposed to be in court on Wednesday but his court date was postponed due to heightened security concerns in the Belgian capital.
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