Belgian authorities have asked for the public's help in tracking down a 24-year-old man who is believed to have been an associate of Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam.
Abdeslam was arrested in Belgium on Friday. According to French state prosecutor Francois Molins, Abdeslam had intended to carry out a suicide bombing at the State de France stadium during the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last November, but then backed out.
Molins is due in Brussels on Monday for a meeting with Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw. France is asking Belgium to hand over Abdeslam so he can be prosecuted there.
Belgium has helped neighbouring France to investigate the Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead and hundreds injured, after it was determined that several of the perpetrators had links to Belgium.
Belgian authorities had asked the public in December for help in identifying two men who had travelled to Hungary on false papers with Abdeslam three months earlier. The two men identified themselves with fake Belgian identity cards as Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal.
The man using Kayal's identity has now been identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, Belgian prosecutors said in a statement Monday.
Laachraoui was known to have left for Syria in February 2013, they added.
But traces of his DNA have been found in a house and an apartment in Belgium that are believed to have been used by the terrorist group involved in the Paris attacks, the prosecutors said.
The Islamist State extremist group claimed responsibility for the killings.
The man using Bouzid's identity is believed to have been killed last week in Brussels, during a shootout with police at an apartment in the southern neighbourhood of Forest. Weapons and Abdeslam's fingerprints were found in that flat.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said on Sunday that Abdeslam was "ready to restart something in Brussels," without giving further details.
He said "a new network" had formed around Abdeslam in the Belgian capital, adding that so far "more than 30 people" have been found to be involved in the Paris terrorist attacks.
French President Francois Hollande was due later Monday to meet with representatives from half a dozen victims and associations of victims' families at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
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