THE SOLE SURVIVING member of an Islamic State group cell that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015 has been transferred from France to Belgium where he face trial for attacks at a Brussels airport and metro station.
Salah Abdeslam, 32, was recently given a whole-life sentence in a trial in France for his involvement in the Paris attacks.
The former Brussels resident was brought from the Fleury-Merogis prison south of Paris to Belgium’s Ittre prison between Brussels and Charleroi, a source close to the case told AFP.
He will be held in prison in Belgium until his trial on 10 October.
He is being tried for his involvement in March 2016 attacks that were carried out by the same cell behind the Paris attacks.
The attacks in Belgium, which killed 32 people at the national airport and in a Brussels metro station, were also claimed by the Islamic State organisation.
The Belgian trial could last until the summer of 2023.
Abdeslam was captured alive in Brussels by police days before the Belgium attacks.
He was handed over to France to face trial there over the 2015 attacks at the Bataclan concert hall and other venues.
On 30 June, he was sentenced to life in prison with only a slim chance of parole after 30 years, the toughest possible punishment under French law.
He did not appeal the sentence after the trial, which was the biggest in modern French history.
All of the attackers except for Abdeslam died by suicide or were killed by police during or after the assault.
Abdeslam will be tried in Belgium alongside five of his co-defendants in Paris, including Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat” who abandoned his cart of explosives at the Brussels airport before fleeing.
Another native of Brussels, Oussama Atar, the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks, will also be tried in absentia, as he is presumed dead in Syria.
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