France charges main suspect in foiled attack plot
AFP on March 31, 2016, 5:30 am
Paris (AFP) - France on Wednesday charged the main suspect in a foiled attack plot, who was found with an arsenal of weapons and explosives at his home, with membership of a terrorist organisation.
The move comes as investigators step up efforts to smash a tangled web of Islamic State-linked extremists blamed for both the November Paris attacks and last week's suicide bombings on Brussels airport and metro that killed 32 people.
French national Reda Kriket, 34, was arrested near Paris last week and a police raid on his apartment netted a cache of assault rifles, handguns and TATP, the highly volatile homemade explosive favoured by IS jihadists.
State prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that "no specific target" had been identified for the foiled attack but that the cache of weapons showed an imminent act of "extreme violence" had likely been prevented.
Kriket's arrest came just four months after the jihadist carnage that claimed 130 lives in Paris.
He had rented the apartment in the suburb of Argenteuil under a false identity last summer, the prosecutor said.
Another French suspect, 32-year-old Anis Bahri, was arrested in Rotterdam in the Netherlands on Sunday in connection with the new Paris plot and is fighting extradition to France.
Both Kriket and Bahri are believed to have travelled to Syria in late 2014 or early 2015, and since then between France, Belgium and the Netherlands, the French prosecutor said.
Two other suspects -- Abderrahmane A., 38, and Rabah M., 34 -- have been charged in Belgium over the foiled plot and will be held for another week, Belgium's federal prosecutor said.
The arrests highlight the extensive links investigators are finding between French and Belgian Islamic State cells behind the Brussels and Paris attacks.
Kriket, who is linked to the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, was found guilty in absentia in Brussels in July of being part of a jihadist recruitment network and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Among those who went to Syria through the network were Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- the suspected ringleader of the November Paris onslaught -- and another Paris attacker, Chakib Akrouh.
Investigations showed Kriket played a key role in financing the recruitment network with money from robberies and stolen goods.
- Brussels airport still closed -
Brussels airport said it would remain closed to passenger flights until at least late Thursday afternoon as the operator carries out further tests for a partial restart.
"The evaluation of the trial is still ongoing and will take at least till tomorrow afternoon. No flights till then," the airport operator said Wednesday on Twitter.
The airport has been shut since suicide bombers Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui blew themselves up in the departure hall on March 22.
Criticism of authorities' handling of the attacks probe has mounted after the sole suspect charged over the attacks was freed on Monday for lack of evidence.
Prosecutors had charged the suspect, named by media as Faycal Cheffou, with "terrorist murder" and were investigating whether he was the third airport attacker who fled after his bomb did not detonate.
But the hunt is now back on for the so-called "man in the hat", seen in CCTV footage next to the two suicide bombers at the airport.
Belgium has been accused of missing a series of leads linking the Paris attacks to those behind the Brussels bombings.
In the most damning revelation, Turkey said Belgium ignored warnings from Ankara after it deported airport suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui as a "terrorist fighter" last year following his arrest near the Syrian border.
