three new people arrested in Belgium

Four suspects are now in prison after this attack which cost the lives of two Swedish football fans in October.

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 announced on Wednesday, November 22.

There are now four suspects imprisoned as part of the investigation opened in Brussels after this attack which cost the lives of two Swedish football 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.

“Assassination and attempted assassination”

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 for “participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the third for “weapons law offences”. 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.