Three alleged accomplices of the perpetrator of the October 16 attack in Brussels were arrested in Belgium and imprisoned after their indictment, the federal prosecutor’s office said Wednesday evening.
There are now four suspects imprisoned as part of the investigation opened in Brussels after this attack which cost the lives of two Swedish soccer fans on the evening of a Belgium-Sweden match.
Other arrests took place in France and Spain, in investigations carried out in parallel in these countries.
The attacker, Abdesalem Lassoued, a radicalized 45-year-old Tunisian who was illegally staying in Belgium, was shot dead by Belgian police the day after the attack, on the morning of October 17, in the Brussels commune of Schaerbeek.
The Belgian investigation focuses in particular on the origin of the weapon of war he used, an “AR-15 type” rifle.
The three new suspects were arrested on Monday as part of a series of searches carried out in Ninove, in Flanders, and in the Brussels municipalities of Saint-Josse and Ixelles, underlined the federal prosecutor’s office.
Two of them were charged with “assassination and attempted assassination in a terrorist context” as well as “participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the third for “offenses against weapons legislation”.
No identity has been specified. The federal prosecutor’s office also did not indicate whether among them were the supposed supplier(s) of the weapons Lassoued possessed. Several pistols were also found after the attack.
At the end of October, during the arrest of the first alleged accomplice, presented as “Lamjed K., born 08/17/1979, of Tunisian nationality”, the prosecution reported “a potential link with the weapon used during of the terrorist attack of October 16, 2023”.
That evening, Abdesalem Lassoued shot three Swedish supporters identified with the blue and yellow colors of their national team in the middle of the street. Two of them were killed and the third seriously injured.
In a claim in Arabic, Lassoued would have mentioned a link between his gesture and the recent demonstrations in Sweden during which copies of the Koran were burned. These desecrations caused turmoil in the Muslim world.
On October 17, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the double assassination perpetrated by the Tunisian.