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French, Belgian police identify two new suspects in Paris terror attacks

CCTV images purportedly show Soufiane Kayal and Samir Bouzid entering Hungary in September with Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam.

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

French and Belgian police are "actively" searching for two new suspects believed to have travelled with a key suspect of the Paris November 13th attacks, Salah Abdeslam, reports Radio France Internationale.

The two men were picked up by border police in September on their way to Hungary carrying fake Belgian identity cards.

The photos of Soufiane Kayal and Samir Bouzid were released by Belgian Federal Police on Friday night, in a new push to shed light on the Paris massacre of November 13th.

Describing the two suspects as "dangerous and probably armed," federal prosecutors warned the public not to "intervene directly" but to call the police.

Investigators have found that the primary suspect of the Paris massacre - Salah Abdeslam - travelled twice to Budapest in September using a rental car.

On September 9th he was stopped by border police on the Austrian-Hungarian border in a Mercedes, accompanied by two men with fake documents. The names on the identity cards correspond to Soufiane Kayal and Samir Bouzid.

Initially, investigators thought the two men were the unidentified suicide bombers of the November 13th massacre. But one of the ID cards was used four days later to make a bank transfer to one of the suspects of a foiled attempt to blow up the La Defense business district on November 18th.

French police were able to foil the plot by carrying out a massive raid in the Saint Denis area of Paris, in which the suspected organiser of the atrocities, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed.

Meanwhile, Salah Abdeslam, 26, is still on the run, having escaped from Paris after the attacks. He is reported to have worked for a period on the Brussels tram system and to have spent time in prison with Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

Read more of this report from RFI.