(France 24) Salah Abdeslam, sentenced to life in jail over the 2015 Paris jihadist attacks, was removed from his Belgian prison cell on Wednesday and transferred back to France.
Abdeslam is the only surviving member of the Islamic State group cell that killed 130 people in the French capital in November 2015, the worst terror attack in the country’s history.
Found guilty in Belgium last year of planning subsequent 2016 attacks in Brussels, his transfer back to continue serving out his French prison sentence had been blocked by an appeals court on human rights grounds.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office confirmed the transfer — first announced by Abdeslam’s lawyer — saying he was taken from a Brussels jail to the border and handed over to French authorities.
