Inside 'Bomb Workshop,' Paris Fugitive's Fingerprint

Salah Abdeslam may have returned to Brussels apartment
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 8, 2016 9:07 AM CST
Inside 'Bomb Workshop,' Paris Fugitive's Fingerprint
This image shows Salah Abdeslam who is wanted in connection to the November 13 attacks in Paris.   (Belgium Federal Police via AP)

Belgian authorities say they've found a hideout visited by Paris-attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam. Police found traces of the explosive powder acetone peroxide, three handmade belts that could carry explosives, and Abdeslam's fingerprint in a third-floor apartment on Rue Bergé in Brussels' Schaerbeek district during a raid on Dec. 10, report the BBC and the Local. Officials suspect the flat, which the Wall Street Journal calls a "bomb workshop," was used by the Belgian attackers to craft suicide belts as they prepared to hit Paris. As for when Abdeslam was there, it's unclear. "A fingerprint has no date or time on it," a prosecutor tells AFP. "Maybe he went there to get his belt, and maybe he went back afterwards. I suppose it's a possibility of both."

But the Guardian reports men who are currently being held in Belgium told officials they drove Abdeslam from Paris to Brussels in the aftermath of the attacks and dropped him in Schaerbeek, and the BBC relays this theory from the prosecutor's office: that Abdeslam did return to the apartment, as it was probably his only "safe" option. Meanwhile, Belgium's federal prosecutor has warned of a possible terrorist attack in the country next Friday, the first anniversary of a foiled attack in Verviers, reports the Guardian. "We are conscious of the symbolic value of 15 January for the terrorists, but we are ready," he says. (More Paris terror attacks stories.)

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