Robert-Jan Bartunek
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The authors of the attacks that killed 32 dead in Brussels March 22 considering initially to conduct new attacks after those in Paris on November 13, said the federal prosecutor of Belgium Sunday.
the members of this terrorist cell have changed their plans in a hurry and decided to strike after the arrest in Belgium several suspects, he said.
“many elements of the investigation show that the terrorist group had originally intended to strike again in France,” said the Belgian federal prosecutor in a statement.
“Surprised by the rapid progress of the investigation, they decided to strike in Brussels,” he added.
in Algiers where he was on an official trip, the french Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, said that this information confirmed the need for continued vigilance.
“At this stage, it is not necessary to more than speculation, but in any case, this is further evidence of the very high threat to all of Europe and of course in France in particular, “he has told a news conference.
The Paris prosecutor’s office declined to comment. According iTELE, the shopping center of La Defense and a conservative Catholic association were targeted.
On his return from Algiers, the French Interior Minister, without revealing either the investigation, stressed in turn that the dismantling of a network was beginning in anything the terrorist threat, which remains at a “high level”.
“This is a long-term job and we need to truth to tell the French that this work will continue long time and it’s not because the networks are dismantled that other networks can not hit, “he told reporters Bernard Cazeneuve.
he recalled that the French authorities had prevented “more than 13 attacks, including six from the spring” and that “nearly 80 people involved in terrorist activities” had been arrested since the beginning of the year.
ABRINI AFTER ABDESLAM
the ongoing investigations into the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis on 13 November, which made 130 deaths, have shown that many of the perpetrators were or had lived in Belgium, among them suspects still alive, arrested in recent weeks after more than four months on the run.
Salah Abdeslam, last survivor of the commando who killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis on 13 November, was arrested in Brussels five days before the suicide attacks against the airport of the Belgian capital to Zaventem and against the Maelbeek metro station in the center of the city, near the headquarters of several European institutions.
Born in Belgium to parents of Morocco, Abdeslam told a judge that he planned initially to explode before the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in the evening of November 13, but he had given up the last minute.
His brother Brahim has meanwhile detonated that evening at Comptoir Voltaire, café eleventh arrondissement of Paris.
Another man suspected of involvement in the preparing attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, Abrini Mohamed was arrested in Brussels on Friday and acknowledged before a magistrate to be “the man in the hat” filmed by surveillance cameras in the company of two suicide bombers who blew themselves in the departure hall of Zaventem airport.
ALL SUSPECTS IDENTIFIED DIED OR JAILED
Abrini, 31, was charged with “terrorist murders,” he said the federal prosecutor.
Another leading suspect, identified by justice like Osama K, was also arrested Friday. Investigators established that he was the man who was on March 22 in the Maelbeek metro station, where a suicide bomber also blew up.
Identified by the local press as a Swedish national named Osama Krayem, it could also be involved in the Paris attacks.
it was filmed in the process of buying the bags used to transport bombs Brussels. His footprints, like those of Abrini, were found in an apartment used for making explosive devices and as a hideout by the terrorists.
Police said Krayem, like other suspects folders Brussels and Paris, fought in the ranks of the organization Islamic State (EI) in Syria and that he returned the last summer by joining the flows of migrants and refugees who earned Greece by sea.
Belgian intelligence and security services have been criticized in recent months, including overseas, to not having dismantled in time the terrorist cell, even if now, all known suspects are either in custody or dead
(Sophie Louet in Paris and Elizabeth Pineau in Algiers. Pierre Sérisier and Marc Angrand for french service)
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