Austria to hand over Paris attacks 'accomplices' to France

Austria is to hand over to France two suspected members of the same Islamic State group unit who massacred 130 people in Paris last November, officials and media reports said today.
Austrian authorities believe the Algerian and the Pakistani, aged 34 and 28 at the time, travelled to Greece along with two men involved in the attacks, posing as refugees.
While the assailants continued on to France and died after conducting their massacre on November 13, the other two were detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had falsified Syrian passports.
Once let go, they made it to Salzburg in western Austria at the end of November -- after the Paris atrocities -- and Austrian police arrested them at a migrant centre on December 10.

Following a French request, a court in Salzburg approved at the beginning of July their transfer to France, but the Pakistani appealed, the Austria Press Agency reported on Wednesday.
A higher court in the city of Linz rejected this appeal today, a spokesman told AFP.

The man, hands and feet in cuffs and surrounded by eight masked and heavily armed police, told the court in northern Austria that he feared for his safety in France and that he would not get a fair trial.
The Algerian had not appealed and it is possible he is already in France. A spokesman for state prosecutors in Salzburg declined to comment on the pair's current whereabouts.

Officials in France were not immediately available for comment.
Austrian prosecutors said in April that they were looking into "leads" suggesting that the Pakistani may have been involved in attacks in 2008 in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people.