Belgium charges 2 with terrorism over Paris attacks

He also declared intensification of the country’s war efforts against ISIS, saying the aircraft carrier Charles DeGaulle will deploy to the region on Thursday, according to The Guardian.

The Belgian national believed to be the mastermind behind the Paris attacks boasted months ago about how he evaded capture in the midst of planning a terrorist “plot'”.

He asked lawmakers to amend the constitution to give the president more power when the country is faced with an immediate, serious threat, and to allow the government to strip French citizenship from people with dual nationality who are convicted of terrorism or “threatening the nation’s interests”. “We were thinking of the victims and their families”, he said.

Another of his brothers, Mohammad Abdeslam, was detained by police police after the attacks, but had since been released.

A French official with direct knowledge of the investigation but who was not authorized to be publicly identified as speaking about the probe also told The Associated Press that Abaaoud was the likely mastermind.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud is thought to be in Syria now with the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

Mostefai had been identified by police as “radicalised” and was responsible for a number of petty crimes in France.

Salah Abdeslam, 26, is wanted in Belgium after it was discovered he was involved in the France attack this weekend.

Early Monday morning, a law enforcement source told ABC News Abdeslam had been tracked to a building in Molenbeek, where he was surrounded by police, but later police found he wasn’t there. Early reports indicate that Abaaoud has already fled to Syria.

“Investigators see a link with Verviers”, it said, referring to an eastern Belgian town where police shot dead two militants in January and broke up a cell aiming to kill Belgian police officers in the streets days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. Abaaoud is reportedly from the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, the same neighborhood in Belgium that is home to at least two of the Paris suicide bombers. Both had previously been flagged as potential terrorists.

One of his brothers, 31-year-old Brahim Abdeslam, was named by a French judicial source as the suicide bomber who blew himself up on Boulevard Voltaire. At least 129 people were killed and 352 others wounded in the attacks. More than 350 people were injured, almost 100 with critical injuries.

France launched airstrikes Sunday in the city of Raqqa, Syria, dropping 20 bombs on the Islamic State group stronghold.

“My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary”, said Abaaoud, who is identified in the magazine as Abu Umar al-Baljiki.