Key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been transferred to France and is due to appear before investigating judges for eventual charges, according to French prosecutors.
Abdeslam, who was arrested in Belgium last month after four months on the run, was wanted in France for his role in the attacks on November 13 last year in which 130 people were killed.
He was the only survivor of the attacks and his testimony could help link the events of the night, when three teams of attackers blew themselves up or sprayed gunfire at night clubs, a music hall and the sports stadium outside Paris.
The transfer of the suspected extremist who had been Europe's most wanted fugitive was carried out without advance notice and in secrecy.
Abdeslam had been held in a high-security cell at a jail in Beveren near Antwerp.
French lawyer Frank Berton announced on Wednesday that he will lead Abdeslam's defence, describing him in a French TV interview as a young man "falling apart" and ready to cooperate.
Mr Berton, who said he was "rather surprised" his client had already arrived in France, met Abdeslam in the Belgian prison and told the iTele TV channel that his client wants to talk.
He said Abdeslam had told him "he has things to say, that he wants to explain his route to radicalisation" as well as his role in the attacks - but not take responsibility for others.
"That means be judged for facts and acts that he committed but not for what he did not commit simply because he is the only survivor of the attacks," Mr Berton said.
Abdeslam, whose brother blew himself up in the Paris attacks, is charged with attempted murder over a shootout with police in Brussels on March 15. He was arrested three days later.
Belgian police questioned Abdeslam about potential links to the three suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels airport and Metro on March 22, killing 32 people - just days after Abdeslam's arrest.
The French justice minister said Abdeslam will be held in an adapted prison in the Paris region with maximum security.
Jean-Jacques Urvoas said he will be placed in the solitary confinement sector of the prison under guard of a dedicated team, following his presentation to a judge later on Wednesday.
Mr Urvoas did not say which prison Abdeslam will be held in.
Mystery continues to hang over Abdeslam's role in the attacks.
He returned from France to Belgium after his brother blew himself up, calling cohorts in Brussels to pick him up.
However, a suicide belt bearing his fingerprints was found south of Paris and a car he had been driving was found in a northern Paris district.
Mr Berton, who has taken on tough cases in the past, said in the iTele interview that Abdeslam "has the right to be defended".
"We're in a democracy... we're not in a totalitarian state," he said.
In a surprise assessment, Abdeslam's Belgian lawyer Sven Mary dismissed him as a "little jerk among Molenbeek's little delinquents, more a follower than a leader" in a profile published by the French daily Liberation on Wednesday.
"He has the intelligence of an empty ashtray," Liberation quoted Mr Mary as saying in the article that focused on the lawyer's career.
He said Abdeslam had admitted that he had read an interpretation of the Muslim holy book on the internet - not the text itself.
Mr Mary was quoted as saying: "He is the perfect example of the GTA (Grand Theft Auto) generation who thinks he lives in a video game."
Meanwhile, former chief terror magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere said that while Abdeslam's arrival in France is important, the investigation is far from over.
He said: "What is important is not just his declarations, but to be confronted with concrete elements of the probe, a very thick file."
