Hungary: Paris Fugitive Recruited Men Amid Budapest Migrants

AP:

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s government has confirmed that Salah Abdeslam, a fugitive suspected in the deadly Paris attacks, was in the Budapest train station before mid-September and left with men who had been traveling amid a wave of asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe.

Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, says Thursday at a press conference that the Hungarian secret services had confirmed information about Abdeslam they had received from foreign agencies. He says the agency did not have this information at the time of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks nor even as the Budapest train station became a hotspot last summer during Europe’s migrant crisis.

While Lazar did not mention Abdeslam by name, his identity was confirmed to The Associated Press by a government spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information.

According to Lazar, the Paris fugitive was at the Keleti Railway terminal in Budapest where he recruited young men who were refusing to register with Hungarian authorities and he left the country with them.