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Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam charged with 'terrorist murder' and moved to maximum security jail

Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in November's Paris attacks, has been charged with "terrorist murder" and moved to a maximum security Belgian jail, but his lawyer says he will fight extradition to France. 
Abdeslam initially planned to blow himself up outside the Stade de France during the Paris attacks but changed his mind, a prosecutor said after the charges were laid. 
He was caught after being shot in the leg in a dramatic police raid in Brussels on Friday, and was also charged with participating in a terrorist group. He then spent one night in hospital before being taken to a maximum security prison in the northwestern tourist city of Bruges.
Salah Abdeslam.
Salah Abdeslam.
Belgian prosecutors said Abdeslam and a second man arrested with him on Friday had been charged with "participation in terrorist murder".
"He is cooperating with Belgian justice," his lawyer Sven Mary said outside the judicial police headquarters on Saturday.
He added that the 26-year-old French national, who was bedridden after being shot in the leg, had admitted being in Paris on November 13.
Abdeslam's elder brother was among the suicide bombers involved in gun and bomb attacks that night that killed 130 people.
Mr Mary said that the Abdeslam, who was born and raised in Brussels in a Moroccan immigrant family, would refuse the extradition demanded by French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels during Friday's drama.
Legal experts said his challenge was unlikely to succeed, but it would buy him more time to prepare his eventual defence.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said that Abdeslam told interrogators he initially "wanted to blow himself up" at the Stade de France stadium before changing his mind. Mr Molins said the statement should be "taken cautiously".
French and Belgian leaders have hailed his arrest, several days after Brussels police stumbled on his fingerprints during a raid that turned violent, as a turning point in clarifying who planned and ordered the Paris attacks, in which all the identified assailants were shot dead or blew themselves up.
The arrest raises questions about the intelligence capabilities of the security services and the size of network Abdeslam could call on to conceal him for four months before he was found just a few hundred metres from his parents' home in the down-at-heel, North African quarter of the borough of Molenbeek.
A man using false papers in the names of Amine Choukri and Monir Ahmed Alaaj was also charged with terrorist murder.
A man in the house was charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation and he and a woman were charged with concealing criminals.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency cabinet meeting that a trial could answer questions for those who suffered in the attacks.
"Abdeslam will have to answer to French justice for his acts," he said. "It is an important blow to the terrorist organisation Daesh (Islamic State) in Europe."
Friday's heavily armed swoop came after fake passports and Abdeslam's fingerprints were found following a bloody raid on Tuesday in which Mohamed Belkaid, a 35-year-old Algerian was shot dead and police officers wounded.
Hollande said Abdeslam's role in the killings was unclear, but investigators were sure he helped plan the operation for the Syria-based group.
After an abandoned suicide vest was found in Paris, speculation arose that the younger brother may have meant to kill himself but changed his mind.
With AFP. 
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