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Paris attack prime suspect extradited to France from Belgium

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The prime suspect of the bloody Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, has been extradited to France from Belgium prosecutors from both countries announced on Wednesday in a joint statement.

Abdeslam played a major role in the attacks in November by ISIS militants which claimed the lives of at least 130 people sending chilling shock-waves around the world and also eliciting wide-spread condemnation.

Four months before he was captured, Abdeslam, 26, was declared the most wanted fugitive in Europe until he was nabbed in Brussels. He is due to appear before French judges later on Wednesday.

Read also: Justin Trudeau condemns killing of Canadian hostage held in the Philippines

“Salah Abdeslam has been handed over to the French authorities this morning,” Belgium’s federal prosecutors said in a statement.

His capture in March came four days before separate suicide bomb attacks by Islamist militants at Brussels international airport and on a metro train station which killed 32 people.

Frank Berton, a high-profile French criminal lawyer, said he would lead Abdeslam’s defence and had visited his client for more than two hours last week in his prison cell in Belgium along with Abdeslam’s Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary.

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