French investigators probing the 2015 Paris attacks have asked Turkey to hand over a detainee suspected of helping the attackers with logistics, sources close to the case told Agence France-Presse (AFP) yesterday.
Ahmed Dahmani, 28, a Moroccan-Belgian man, is an associate of Salah Abdeslam, the only prime suspect still alive after the Daesh attacks that left 130 people dead.
French investigators issued an international arrest warrant on May 23 for Dahmani, who is in prison in Turkey on terrorism charges, sources said.
Dahmani has a history of petty crime and hails from Molenbeek, a neighborhood in Brussels that was home to several of the jihadists behind the Paris attacks and March 2016 Brussels bombings.
Mohamed Abrini, a failed Brussels bomber who is now in detention in Belgium, described Dahmani as a childhood friend.
A source said a document found at Dahmani's home during a search two months before the Paris attacks in connection with a stolen car contained details of the French shop where Abdeslam bought products to make explosives. Extremist propaganda was also found at his home.
Dahmani traveled to Turkey from Amsterdam on Nov. 15, 2015, the morning after the attacks at the Bataclan concert venue, the Stade de France arena and Paris nightspots. French authorities placed him under electronic surveillance. A week after his arrival in Turkey, Dahmani was arrested with two human smugglers who were attempting to take him to Syria.
All three were sentenced last year to 10 years and nine months in prison for belonging to a terrorist group and forgery.
Phone records confirmed that Dahmani and Abdeslam had been in contact hundreds of times.
Abdeslam was also stopped by police while trying to board a ferry from Greece to Italy with Dahmani in August 2015, three months before the Paris attacks.
