BRUSSELS – The prime surviving suspect for the November 13
Paris attacks planned to blow himself up at a sports stadium with fellow
Islamic State militants but changed his mind, he told Belgian investigators on
Saturday.

The admission by Salah Abdeslam came a day after he was
shot in the leg and captured during a police raid in Brussels, ending an
intensive four-month manhunt.

“He wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France
and … backed out,” said the lead French investigator, Francois Molins,
quoting Abdeslam’s statement to a magistrate in Brussels before he was
transferred to a secure jail in Bruges.

The gun and bomb attacks on the stadium, bars and a
concert hall killed 130 people and marked the deadliest militant assault in
Europe since 2004.

Molins told reporters in Paris that people should treat
with caution initial statements by the 26-year-old French national. But his
capture and apparent urge to talk marked a major breakthrough for investigators
after the trail had seemed to go cold.

Abdeslam’s lawyer said he admitted being in Paris during
the attacks but gave no details. He told reporters his client, born and raised
by Moroccan immigrants in Brussels, had cooperated with investigators but would
fight extradition to France.

Legal experts said his challenge was unlikely to succeed
but would buy him weeks, possibly months, to prepare his defence.

Belgian prosecutors charged Abdeslam and a man arrested
with him with “participation in terrorist murder”.

Abdeslam’s elder brother Brahim, with whom he used to run
a bar, was among the suicide bombers. Salah’s confession suggested he was the
10th man mentioned in an Islamic State claim of responsibility for the attacks,
after which police found one suicide vest abandoned in garbage.

Abdeslam’s family, who had urged him to give himself up,
said through their lawyer that they had a “sense of relief”.

Authorities hope the arrest may help disrupt other
militant cells that Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said were
certainly “out there” and planning further violence. French security
services stepped up their measures at frontier crossings after a global warning
from Interpol that other fugitives might try to move country.

“We’ve won a battle against the forces of ignorance
but the struggle isn’t over,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said.

The case has raised tensions with France but Michel and
French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for an EU summit when
Abdeslam was arrested, praised each other’s security services. Hollande was
attending an international soccer match at the Stade de France when the bombers
struck.

– Reuters