|
Train station arrest was one of three on Friday connecting Brussels and Paris attacks
[Ynet] Belgian police captured a suspect carrying what a broadcaster said was a suitcase full of explosives on Friday, after shooting him in the leg during a major police operation following Tuesday's suicide kabooms in Brussels.The federal prosecutor's office said the arrest was one of three in Brussels on Friday linked to the arrest in Gay Paree the previous day of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack. Nine people in total were locked away Please don't kill me! since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities have swooped on gunnies they link both to the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and to attacks in Gay Paree last November that killed 130. Heavily armed police and troops with trucks cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled kabooms. Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Clerfayt as saying the suspect was detained after being maimed and that he was linked to Tuesday's suicide kabooms in Brussels. It said he had been found to be in possession of a suitcase full of explosives. Witnesses told local media police had shot the man in the leg at a tram stop after he failed to respond to their orders. One witness told RTBF the man had a girl of about eight with him. Islamic State jacket wallahs hit Brussels airport and a metro train on Tuesday in the worst such attack in Belgian history. Investigators believe those attacks were carried out by the same cell responsible for November's gun and kabooms in Gay Paree. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said six people were held in Brussels on Thursday, of whom three were released and three were remanded in jug facing possible charges. Three others were detained on Friday following the arrest in La Belle France of Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchie sentenced to 10 years in Brussels in absentia in July as part of an Islamist recruiting network dubbed the Syrian Connection. Germany's Der Spiegel magazine said German police had arrested two people, one of whom had received phone messages with the name of the metro station bomber and the word "fin" - French for "end" - three minutes before the metro blast. The German interior ministry declined immediate comment. A person familiar with the investigation in Belgium said one of the people arrested there was believed to be a suspected accomplice caught on security camera footage with the metro station bomber. "We have strong indications that this is the suspect who was hunted for the last couple of days. The identification is still ongoing," the source said. However he said those arrested before midday on Friday did not include a third suspect seen on video alongside the two who blew themselves up at the airport. In Gay Paree on Thursday, authorities arrested Kriket, a French national suspected of belonging to a bully boy network planning an attack in La Belle France. French officials did not directly tie that plot to the Brussels attacks, but Clerfayt, the Schaerbeek mayor, said the man maimed on Friday was linked to both investigations. A police source said Sherlocks found acetone peroxide explosives in an apartment in a Gay Paree suburb after the arrest. Prosecutors confirmed the second airport bomber was Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Belgian Islamist fighter in Syria suspected of making boom belts for November's Gay Paree attacks. Belgian daily De Morgen said Sherlocks had identified a new suspect they believe played a role in the Brussels bombings, 28-year-old Syrian Naim al-Hamed. The paper said he was on a list circulated to the security services of other European countries after Tuesday's attacks, and was also suspected of involvement in the Gay Paree attacks. The Islamic State (ISIS) posted a video on social media calling the Brussels blasts a victory and featuring the training of Belgian gunnies suspected in the Gay Paree attacks. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-03-26 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=450339 |