Austria sends attack suspects to France

VIENNA: Austria has handed over to France two men thought to be connected to the militants who carried out the Paris attacks in November.

The Algerian and Pakistani men, now aged 29 and 35 and who have not been named, were arrested in Austria on Dec. 10 and have been extradited to France, the prosecutors’ office in the city of Salzburg said. “The two accused have left federal territory,” it said in a statement.

Austrian and French authorities believe they traveled to Greece along with two men involved in the Nov. 13 atrocities, posing as refugees.

While the eventual assailants continued on to France, the two were detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had falsified Syrian passports. Once let go, they made it to Salzburg at the end of November, after the Paris atrocities, and Austrian police arrested them at a migrant center.

Following a French request, a court in Salzburg in western Austria approved at the beginning of July their transfer to France.

“Both suspects have now left the country,” prosecutors said in a statement on Friday.

They had said in April that they were looking into “leads” suggesting that the Pakistani may have been involved in attacks in 2008 in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people.

He unsuccessfully appealed against his transfer, saying he would not get a fair trial in France and that he feared for his safety.

Salzburg prosecutors added that two more men, a Moroccan and an Algerian arrested eight days after the others, remained in custody.

In December prosecutors had said that the men, aged 25 and 40 at the time, were being held “because of indications of close contact” with the two who have now been transferred to France.

The French newspaper Le Monde has reported that the two men traveled together from Syria to the Greek island of Leros with two Iraqi brothers who blew themselves up near the Stade de France stadium outside Paris on Nov. 13.

The two men were first arrested on Leros during a passport check on Oct. 3, because one of them spoke Arabic poorly and the other could not describe Aleppo, which was cited as his birthplace on his passport, the newspaper Le Parisien has said.

Both men were released three weeks later and went to Austria, where they were arrested again.

The men’s transfer to France was carried out under a European arrest warrant issued by France, the Austrian prosecutors’ office said.