Fugitive Paris jihad mass murderer captured alive

One small victory in what will be a long, long war.

Salah Abdeslam, the most-wanted suspect for the Paris attacks  who eluded capture for four months, has been arrested after a shootout with heavily-armed police in the Belgian capital.

Robert Spencer

“Fugitive Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam captured in anti-terror raid, officials tell AP,” Fox News, March 18, 2016:

Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, was arrested in Belgium’s capital Friday after four months at large, two French police officials told The Associated Press.

They said he was arrested in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Both officials are in contact with people involved in the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing operation.

Theo Francken, Belgium’s secretary of state for asylum and migration, tweeted, “We hebben hem,” which translates to English, “We got him.”

The arrest would be a dramatic turn in the investigation that has vexed European officials for months.

Abdeslam fled Paris after the Nov. 13 gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people at a theatre, the national stadium and cafes. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.

We hebben hem.
— Theo Francken (@FranckenTheo) March 18, 2016

There are few details about the raids. Francois Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek, said two people were injured in the operation….

Why did Europe let them in?

Andrew Bolt

Yes, good, but remember how many people he helped to kill before he was caught: 

“We’ve got him” was the jubilant tweet by Brussels migration minister Theo Francken as Europe’s most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam was shot but arrested alive in his home town in Brussels.

Abdeslam has been on the run since the devastating November Paris terrorist attacks on the Bataclan theatre, the Stade de France and Parisian bars, which killed 130.

And think how Europe so wilfully imported the terrorism that is now helping to drag it to its knees:

Abdeslam was a key member of the Paris attacks and the brother of Brahim Abdeslam, one of the suicide bombers. He is a childhood friend of the ringleader of the attacks Abdelhamid Abaaoud…

Several other accomplices believed to be involved in the Paris attacks were also arrested in this morning’s raids. They were named locally as Monir Ahmed Alahaj and Soufyane Kayal who was an associate of another Paris connection Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, who was killed in the shootout in Forest. 

And this, I suspect, will turn into a disaster and near-existential threat to the very idea of Germany: 

Internal government reports now suggest that as many as 1.5 million asylum-seekers arrived in Germany last year. This constitutes more than 1 per cent of the total German population. A similar number are expected this year and in the years ahead (and this is before anyone takes into account the right of those who have arrived to bring their families to join them). Across Germany, social services are straining, private buildings threatened with requisition unless they are handed over for the housing of refugees, and public sympathy is diminishing. 

It is utterly bizarre – a dangerous misreading – for Germany to be negotiating a “solution” that merely imports much the same kind of danger from elsewhere:

In a move to diminish the numbers of migrants from Syria coming into Europe through Turkey, Merkel negotiated an arrangement with Ankara that has two advantages for the latter. The first is that the cash-strapped EU will pay €3 billion ($4.4bn) to the Turkish government. The second is that Merkel and her EU colleagues have begun negotiating with Turkey to ease visa travel restrictions into the EU for the country’s 75 million ­citizens.

UPDATE

In Britain: 

NEARLY a third of people arrested in London each year are not British, the UK’s top police chief has revealed. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said 28 to 29 per cent of the capital’s 250,000 arrests per year are foreigners…