Belgian police in new raid linked to foiled French terror plot
2 April 2016 3:40 AM IST
Belgian police on Thursday carried out a new raid in connection with a foiled attack plot in France whose main suspect was charged this week with membership of a terrorist organisation, prosecutors said.
“A raid is under way in connection with the (Reda) Kriket case. It is taking place at Marke, in the town of Courtrai” in northwestern Belgium, Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office, said.
Soldiers and police officers could be seen taking part in the operation near a busy motorway, according to images from local media.
French national Reda Kriket was arrested near Paris last week and at his apartment police found a
cache of assault rifles, handguns and TATP, the highly volatile homemade explosive favoured by Islamic State (IS) jihadists.
French prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that “no specific target” had been identified for the foiled attack, but the cache of weapons showed an imminent act of "extreme violence" had likely been prevented.
Kriket's arrest came four months after IS jihadists killed 130 people in the French capital.
Investigators in France and Belgium have been stepping up efforts to smash a network of IS-linked extremists blamed for both the November Paris attacks and last week’s suicide bombings on the Brussels airport and metro that killed 32 people.
‘Abdeslam wants to cooperate with French authorities’
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam wants to cooperate with French authorities, his lawyer said today, confirming that his client wanted to be extradited from Belgium to France.
A prosecutor was set to travel to the prison in the city of Bruges where Abdeslam is being held to discuss his extradition under a European arrest warrant.
“He wants to cooperate with the French authorities,” lawyer Cedric Moisse said.
Abdeslam has not spoken to investigators since Brussels was hit last week by attacks at the airport and a metro station that were claimed by the Islamic State group.
He has links to several of those involved in the suicide bombings that killed 32 people.
Known as Europe’s most wanted man, the 26-year-old was captured on March 18 in Brussels after spending four months on the run following the November suicide bombings and gun attacks in Paris which left 130 people dead.
He is believed to be the last survivor from the cell of 10 men who carried out the massacre.
The Belgian-born French citizen, who was caught unarmed after being shot in the leg in a dramatic police raid in Brussels, told interrogators he had intended to blow himself up at the Stade de France stadium in Paris but had backed out at the last minute.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said that Abdeslam had also been planning to target Brussels.
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