WARSAW: A Moroccan accomplice of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the deadly 2015 Islamic State attacks in Paris, is being held in Poland over suspected participation in terrorist activity, Polish prosecutors said Wednesday.
"During our investigation we found that between December 2014 and September 2016 Mourad T. was involved with an armed crime organisation -- an international terrorist organisation called Islamic State," prosecutors said in a statement.
Mourad T., born in Casablanca and now 28 years old, was detained September 5, 2016 in Poland. If the court in the southern city of Katowice convicts him, he could get between six months to eight years in prison.
Prosecutors added that Mourad T. was an "accomplice" and "scout" of Abaaoud, who planned the November 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
Mourad T. notably met with Abaaoud in the Turkish city of Edirne in late 2014, along with Sofiane Amghar and Khalid Ben Larbi, two jihadists who were killed in a terror raid in Belgium in 2015.
Mourad T. used several false identities and spent time in EU countries Austria, Greece, Hungary, as well as in non-members Turkey and Serbia.
Prosecutors added that they found instructions on how to make explosive devices and mentions of potential targets on the telephone belonging to Mourad T.
This marks the first Polish investigation of an Islamic State member, which the domestic counterintelligence agency ABW undertook after receiving information from its EU counterparts.
According to local media, the first intel came from the CIA.