Top fugitive in Paris terror attacks captured in Brussels, officials say

PARIS — Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the 10th participant in the Paris terrorist attacks of Nov. 13, was captured Friday during a police raid in Brussels, a Belgian official said.

"We've got him," Théo Francken, a Belgian minister, wrote on Twitter. The country's two public broadcasters, VRT and RTBF, reported that Abdeslam had been captured and had a leg injury, and that the raid was one of four carried out in the Belgian capital.

Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium was scheduled to make a statement at 7 p.m. local time, or 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

The raid, carried out by a heavily armed phalanx of police officers, began about an hour after Belgian prosecutors announced that they had found Abdeslam's fingerprint in an apartment that was raided Tuesday.

Of the 10 men believed to have participated directly in the attacks, which were orchestrated by the Islamic State and killed 130 people, Abdeslam was the only one who was at large. The rest are dead.

Michel raced from a summit meeting of European Union and Turkish leaders about the migration crisis in Europe to deal with the situation. On Twitter, he said he was monitoring the police operations with President François Hollande of France.

"There is a link with the Paris attacks," Hollande told reporters in Brussels, while declining to provide details of the police operation. "We need to let the Belgian police finish its work and wrap up the operation that is still ongoing."

The French and Belgian officers who conducted the raid were surprised to find the residence occupied. They immediately came under fire, and in the ensuing gunfight, a 35-year-old man named Mohamed Belkaid was killed, while two other people escaped. Four police officers were slightly wounded.

It was the second time the authorities had found Abdeslam's fingerprints in an apartment in Brussels; in December, his fingerprints were found in an apartment in the Schaerbeek section of Brussels, along with material that might have been used to make suicide belts.

The tantalizing, and frustrating, clues suggested that Abdeslam hid in the Belgian capital after the attacks, and might be there still, although some investigators theorized that he escaped to Syria.

Belgian prosecutors said Friday that the Algerian man killed in the raid, Belkaid, was "most probably" a man who helped the Paris attackers. Belkaid had been using fake Belgian identity papers in the name Samir Bouzid.

A man traveling under that name had been previously identified as one of two men in a car with Abdeslam in September as the three drove between Hungary and Austria. After the attacks, someone using the name Samir Bouzid wired 750 euros, about $825, to the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the on-the-ground organizer of the attacks. (Abaaoud died in a police raid outside Paris on Nov. 18.)

Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French citizen of Morrocan ancestry, is believed to have driven the car that carried a team of terrorists to the Bataclan theater, where 89 people died.

In the hours after the attacks in Paris, and before his identity was widely known, Abdeslam was overlooked by the French authorities as he returned to Belgium by car.

It remains unclear if he was one of the assailants expected to carry out a subsequent attack, in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris. He was suspected of dumping his suicide vest in a trash can after the attacks, but authorities have not found his DNA. They are not certain that the vest belonged to him, although that has been the working hypothesis. It is also not certain whether he ever intended to detonate the vest.

Abdeslam and his brother Ibrahim, who blew himself up during the attacks, lived in Molenbeek; Abdeslam was known to the authorities as a possible Islamic militant.

In 2010, Ibrahim Abdeslam served time in a Belgian prison with Abaaoud, who helped organize the attacks and who also lived in Molenbeek.

Salah Abdeslam had several brushes with the law, mainly for minor offenses. A week before the attacks, Belgian authorities shut down the nightclub Ibrahim Abdeslam operated because the two were suspected of selling drugs.

In September, Salah Abdeslam drove to Budapest, where he picked up two men who returned with him to Belgium with fake identity cards.

The morning after the attacks, Abdeslam was stopped on a highway in the French town of Cambrai, near the Belgian border, but he was waved through.

Despite an enormous manhunt, Abdeslam evaded the dragnet in at least two different countries.

There has been almost weekly reports by various French and Belgium media outlets, none confirmed yet by government authorities, of Abdeslam's whereabouts. Sightings have been reported in at least two places in Belgium as well as in Amsterdam. Other law enforcement experts suggested that he went to Syria.

In December, it was revealed that Abdeslam may have evaded the Belgian police two days after the attacks because of an arcane law that prevented law enforcement officers from raiding a private home after 9 p.m.

Last month, his fiancée was quoted in the Belgium media saying that he would be killed before he would allow himself to be captured.