Two Belgians have been charged in connection with the Paris attacks after driving Salah Abdeslam, the suspected gunman still at large, from the French capital to Brussels early on Saturday.
The men were quoted by prosecutors and defence lawyers as saying they received a call from Abdeslam, a friend from the Brussels district of Molenbeek, at 2am asking them to collect him. They drove to Paris and met him in the Barbès district at 5am, then returned together to Brussels.
Moroccan-born Mohammed Amri, 27, and Hamza Attouh, 21, were detained at the weekend along with five others from Molenbeek. The five others were released but Amri and Attouh were formally arrested on Monday and charged by federal prosecutors on Tuesday.
“They have been charged with complicity in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of terrorist organisations,” a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office said.
According to officials and lawyers quoted in the Belgian press, the men say they knew nothing about the attacks and that Abdeslam did not mention the mass killings on the journey back to Brussels. They also said they did not see any weapons on him. Near the border at Cambrai, their grey VW Golf was stopped at a police checkpoint but they were allowed to drive on.
Officials have not confirmed press claims that bullets or ammonium nitrate – a fertiliser often used to make bombs – had been found at the two men’s homes in Molenbeek. According to the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, the two men claimed that the chemical had been intended to be used in the garden.
The Austrian interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said Abdeslam had been stopped on 9 September at a routine police control point in western Austria near the border with Germany. He was travelling with two other men and told police they were going away for a week. “He said he was going on holiday in Vienna, but there are no further details yet,” Mikl-Leitner told ORF radio. “Now the question is where did he stay in Austria, and for what purpose?”
