BRUSSELS (AP) – A Brussels apartment was likely used to make bombs for the Paris attacks, and one of the plotters also hid out there after escaping a police dragnet, Belgian prosecutors said Friday.
The prosecutors said they found Salah Abdeslam’s fingerprint in a search of the apartment on Dec. 10, but wouldn’t say why they waited a month to announce it.
The search also turned up three suspected suicide belts, traces of the same explosive used in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people and other material that could be used to manufacture bombs, according to the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said the third-floor apartment was likely used as a hideout after Abdeslam fled the attacks. Abdeslam, who is still at large, called for two friends to pick him up amid the bloodshed and chaos that night that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured.
“We found material to make explosives, we found traces of explosives and we found three belts. So you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make the right deduction,” Van der Sypt told The Associated Press.