Spanish police have arrested a man wanted by Belgian authorities who they have claimed is linked to Brussels terrorist attacker Abdesalem Lassoued, who fatally shot two Swedish nationals earlier this month.
The arrest was made in Benahavís, a town on Malaga’s Costa del Sol, after Belgian authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the man on various charges, including arms trafficking, being a member of a criminal organisation, and money laundering, the newspaper El Mundo reports.
The Spanish National Police raided the suspect’s home this week and stated that they seized a number of electronic devices and what they termed to be a significant amount of money, but have not so far provided much information on the identity of the suspect himself.
What is known, according to El Mundo, is that the man had ties to organised crime and human trafficking and is considered to be radicalised. He was allegedly able to hide in plain sight under a false identity and documentation in a luxury apartment in Malaga despite being a wanted criminal.
Agents of the General Commissariat of Information and the provincial Information brigades of Madrid and Malaga, along with the support of the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) carried out the police operation with the aid of Belgian authorities after the latter supplied information linking the man to Abdesalem Lassoued.
The Spanish suspect is the latest person to be arrested in connection with the Brussels terror attack and it comes just days after another man was arrested and questioned by Belgian authorities who believe he may have supplied Lassoued with the AR-15 rifle that was used to kill the two Swedish nationals.
“There was indeed an additional detention for questioning this morning. We will see if he can possibly be linked to the weapon,” Eric Van Der Sypt of the federal prosecutor’s office said.
Van Der Sypt stated that it was not confirmed if the arrested man was the one who sold Lassoued the rifle in question and noted that the Islamist terrorist also had two pistols with him when he was fatally shot by police in a cafe in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels the morning after his attack.
Belgian broadcaster HLN notes that investigators are still trying to determine how Lassoued, who was living illegally in Belgium after his asylum claim had been rejected, managed to acquire the firearms and that it was likely purchased illegally, possibly through criminal circles.
In France, at least four people have been arrested in connection to the attack, though two have since been released by investigators.
Two of the four suspects face criminal charges of terrorist conspiracy and murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise and are in pretrial detention. Both of the men are said to be Tunisian nationals, like Lassoued.
A lawyer for one of the men, however, claimed that his client had simply known Lassoued personally for several years and was not involved in the attack at all saying Lassoued was “a friend he had known for a long time, of whom he had not seen any sign of radicalization. He could never have imagined such a move to action.”
The aftermath of the Brussels terrorist attack has left many criticising the inaction of Belgian authorities after it was revealed not only that Lassoued was a well-known Islamist in Tunisia but that his home country had requested Belgium extradite him after he had escaped a lengthy prison sentence in 2011, the year he illegally entered Europe.
The revelations led to the resignation of Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne and an investigation has been launched into the Brussels prosecutor’s office, which claimed to have forgotten about the extradition request due to being short-staffed at the time.