BRUSSELS // ISIL extremists behind the Paris attacks planned a fresh strike in France but targeted the Belgian capital instead as police closed in, the federal prosecutor said on Sunday.
"Numerous elements in the investigation have shown that the terrorist group initially had the intention to strike in France again," the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said.
"Surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investigation, they urgently took the decision to strike in Brussels."
The prosecutor gave no further details but the Brussels onslaught followed the March 18 arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam after four months on the run.
The prosecutor also announced that the so-called "man in the hat" Mohamed Abrini had been charged with "terrorist murders" over the attacks in Brussels last month.
Suicide bombers claimed 32 lives when they blew themselves up at Brussels airport and at a metro station on March 22. Investigators have found intimate links between the cell behind the Brussels attacks and the group that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.
Sunday's statement provides confirmation of what many have suspected: the series of raids and arrests in the week leading up to the Brussels attacks pushed the killers to action.
The prosecutor also did not give details of the planned attack in France but late last month, French police arrested Reda Kriket near Paris, finding weapons and explosives in a flat he had used to suggest he was planning an attack of "extreme violence".
The allegation that the killers in Brussels planned a rerun of the Paris attacks comes a day after Belgian authorities charged four men - including Abrini - with participating in "terrorist murders" and the "activities of a terrorist group" in relation to the Brussels attacks.
The other suspects charged on Saturday were identified as Osama Krayem, Herve BM and Bilal EM. Krayem is known to have left the Swedish city of Malmo to fight in Syria.
Belgium has also arrested two suspects, identified as Abderrahmane A and Rabah M, in connection with the Kriket case and on Thursday both were remanded in custody, along with three other suspects held in connection with the November Paris attacks.
Surveillance footage has also placed Abrini in the convoy with the attackers who headed to Paris ahead of the November 13 massacre.
"He is charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempts to commit terrorist murders" in connection with the investigation into the Brussels and Zaventem airport attacks, a statement by the Belgian prosecutor said on Sunday.
The 31-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin confessed to being "the man in the hat" who calmly walked away from the devastated departure hall, the prosecutor said.
He then returned on foot to central Brussels, discarding his hat and coat on the way before disappearing into thin air as the police launched a fresh appeal to the public for help.
Abrini was a long-time petty criminal who grew up with Abdeslam in Belgium's troubled Molenbeek area, home to several other suspects who all share a similar story of getting on the wrong side of the law and becoming radicalised.
The Belgian authorities have faced intense criticism over their handling of the Brussels attacks and the investigation, especially as it has emerged that many of the suspects were known to the police.
Critics say the government has not done enough to prevent extremists targeting Muslim youth in areas such as Molenbeek, with Belgium proportionately the biggest source of foreign fighters going to join the Islamic State group in Syria.
Abdeslam, whose brother Brahim blew himself up in Paris, was seen driving to the French capital with Abrini shortly before the attacks but he apparently balked at the same mission and fled back to Brussels.
Police finally arrested him not far from the family home in Molenbeek after apparently stumbling upon another extremist safe house in the Forest area of the city.
Abdeslam is now awaiting extradition to France.
"That is justice ... he who does something must pay the price," Abdeslam's father, who has lived in Belgium for 40 years, told French radio Europe 1last week.
"I hope everyone will speak now ... we were there, we were happy, we had enough, we went out, had fun but now, we cannot even leave our house," he said.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
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