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 Salah Abdeslam, 26, the first suspected active participant taken
alive, was being held overnight in hospital with a slight leg wound,
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel announced at a news conference
alongside French President Francois Hollande.
"This is an important result in the battle for democracy," Michel
said on Friday, adding that U.S. President Barack Obama had called
to congratulate the Belgian and French leaders.
A Belgian minister broke the news by tweeting, "We got him."
Prosecutors said a second wanted man, who used the false name of
Amine Choukri, was also wounded and captured in the raid on the
apartment in Abdeslam's home neighborhood of Molenbeek.
The operation, planned after fingerprints and passports were found
in a bloody raid three days earlier, was staged in a rush after
media leaked word that police had found Abdeslam's trail.
Hollande, who was visiting Brussels for a European summit, confirmed
France would seek extradition for the Brussels-based Frenchman who,
he said, was definitely in Paris on the bloody night of Friday, Nov.
13 when 130 people were killed.
 Abdeslam's elder brother, a Brussels barkeeper who shared a
chequered history of drugs and petty crime, blew himself up outside
a Parisian cafe that night. Hollande said the younger man's role in
the killings was unclear but investigators were sure he helped plan
the operation for the Syria-based group.
Since all the identified attackers were killed, Abdeslam offers
France a major new chance to understand what happened.
It was now clear, Hollande said, that many more people had been
involved in the Paris attacks on a sports stadium, bars and cafes
and concert hall than was first thought. Security concerns remain,
he added, "The threat level is very high."
FINGERPRINTS
Television footage showed armed security forces dragging a man with
his head covered out of a building and into a car.
Several bursts of gunfire rang out earlier in Molenbeek, a
down-at-heel borough that is home to many Muslim immigrants, notably
of Moroccan descent like Abdeslam's family. Two explosions were
heard after the arrest, though it was unclear whether they were part
of a new operation or the clear-up.
Some four hours later, the main police presence had stood down but
crime scene investigators were still at work.
There had long been speculation about whether Abdeslam had stayed in
Belgium or managed to flee to Syria.
Security services will be seeking information from Abdeslam on
Islamic State plans and structures, his contacts in Europe and Syria
and support networks and finance. Over the past four months, France
and Belgium have detained several people linked to the prime
suspects but none they suspect of a major role.
A man and two women, members of what prosecutors said was "the
family which hid Abdeslam," were detained with the two wanted men
and will be questioned. Investigators will want to know how
extensive a network, under a code of silence, was able to hide such
a high-profile fugitive in a busy inner city neighborhood just a few
hundred yards from his parents' home.
Security agencies' difficulties in penetrating some Muslim
communities, particularly in pursuit of Belgium's unusually high
number of citizens fighting in Syria, has been a key factor in the
inquiry, along with arms dealing in Brussels.
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A four-month inquiry that had seemed to go cold, heated up this week
when French and Belgium officers went to an apartment in the
southern Brussels suburb of Forest on Tuesday, thinking they were
simply looking for physical evidence in the case.
Instead, at least two people sprayed automatic gunfire at them as
they opened the door, wounding three officers. An Algerian called
Mohamed Belkaid was shot dead after a siege but two people were
believed to have gotten away. Prosecutors said on Friday these may
have been Abdeslam and the man called Choukri.
They also said the Algerian was wanted, under the false name Samir
Bouzid, since he appeared on CCTV wiring cash to a woman just after
the Paris attacks. She was a cousin of Abdelhamid Abbaoud, a Belgian
who fought in Syria and is believed to have been a local organizer
for Belgian and French militants. Abbaoud and his cousin died in a
gunbattle in a Paris suburb on Nov. 18.
Crucially, police found Abdeslam's fingerprints.
They also found a fake Belgian ID card issued to "Choukri" and a
fake Syrian passport for the same man in the name Monir Ahmed Alaaj.
That man had been fingerprinted - as Choukri - by German police when
he and Abdeslam were stopped in a car there in October. Those prints
turned up again in January at a house used by the plotters in a
small town south of Brussels.
On Friday, local media said, a tapped telephone confirmed that
Abdeslam was in the house in rue des Quatre-Vents (Four Winds
Street) in Molenbeek. After French media broke word of Abdeslam's
fingerprints being found in the Forest flat, police moved in within
three hours and seized the pair in minutes.
PARIS TRAIL
After his elder brother Brahim blew himself up, Salah Abdeslam was
driven back to Brussels from Paris overnight by two men who admitted
doing so and are now in custody on terrorism charges, along with
eight other suspects in Belgium.
French police stopped Abdeslam three times on the drive back but his
details were circulated only after he reached Belgium.
The attack strained relations between Brussels and Paris, with
French officials suggesting Belgium was lax in monitoring the
activities of hundreds of militants returned from Syria.
Hollande and Michel took pains to exchange compliments to their
security services and warm cross-border cooperation.
Among those still being sought is 31-year-old Belgian Mohamed
Abrini, who was caught on CCTV with Abdeslam at a fuel station on
the motorway to Paris two days before the Nov. 13 attacks.
(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Jan Strupczewski;
Writing by Andrew Heavens and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Ralph
Boulton, Toni Reinhold)
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