Paris terror suspect confesses he was a suicide bomber

BRUSSELS/PARIS—The prime surviving suspect for the Nov. 13 Paris attacks planned to blow himself up at a sports stadium with fellow Islamic State militants but changed his mind, he told Belgian investigators on Saturday.

The admission by Salah Abdeslam came a day after he was shot in the leg and captured during a police raid in Brussels, ending an intensive four-month manhunt.

“He wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France and… backed out,” the lead French investigator, Francois Molins, quoted Abdeslam’s statement to a magistrate in Brussels before he was transferred to a secure jail in Bruges.

The gun and bomb attacks on the stadium, bars and a concert hall killed 130 people and marked the deadliest militant assault in Europe since 2004.

Molins told reporters in Paris that people should treat with caution initial statements by the 26-year-old French national.

But Abdeslam’s capture and apparent urge to talk marked a major breakthrough for investigators after the trail had seemed to go cold.

Abdeslam’s lawyer said his client admitted being in Paris during the attacks, but he gave no details.

The lawyer told reporters that Abdeslam, born and raised by Moroccan immigrants in Brus- sels, had cooperated with investigators but added his client would fight extradition to France.

Legal experts said Abdeslam’s challenge was unlikely to succeed but would buy him weeks, possibly months, to prepare his defense.

Belgian prosecutors charged Abdeslam and a man arrested with him with “participation in terrorist murder.”

Abdeslam’s elder brother Brahim, with whom he used to run a bar, was among the suicide bombers.

Abdeslam’s confession suggested he was the 10th man mentioned in an Islamic State claim of responsibility for the attacks, after which police found one suicide vest abandoned in garbage.

Members of Abdeslam’s family, who had urged him to give himself up, said through their lawyer that they had a “sense of relief.”

Authorities hope the arrest may help disrupt other militant cells that Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said were certainly “out there” and planning further violence.

The case has raised tensions with France but French President Francois Hollande, who was in Brussels for an EU summit when Abdeslam was arrested, praised Belgium’s security services. Hollande was attending an international soccer match at the Stade de France when the bombers struck.