Police in the French city of Nantes have arrested a man in relation to the Brussels terrorist attack earlier this week which saw two Swedes shot and killed by Tunisian illegal immigrant and radical Islamist Abdesalem Lassoued, who was shot dead hours later by Brussels police.
The arrest of the man, who has yet to be identified by police, occurred on Thursday after investigators found that Lassoued had sent him messages and a video online shortly before he had killed his two Swedish victims, broadcaster BFMTV reports.
French newspaper Le Parisien, meanwhile, has claimed that the video sent by Lassoued was also sent to three other individuals, while newspaper Ouest France has stated the suspect is also a Tunisian national.
Belgian Federal Prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw claimed after the attack that Lassoued carried out his massacre alone and that authorities do not suspect him to be part of a broader network of radical Islamist terrorists.
Belgian authorities also said that Lassoued had not been on an anti-terrorism watchlist in Belgium despite reports stating that as early as 2016 Lassoued had been on the radar of authorities in his native Tunisia for radicalism.
While Lassoued may have acted as a so-called ‘lone wolf,”’ many questions remain regarding the attack, including how he had access to the rifle he used to gun down his victims. Islamist terror attacks involving firearms tend to involve networks or the backing of larger terrorist groups. The Islamic State, which took credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre in January of 2015 and the Bataclan nightclub massacre later that year in November, both of which involved automatic rifles, has also claimed to be behind the Brussels attack.
Despite the fact that Lassoued claimed on camera to be a part of the Islamic State terror group, Belgian investigators have been reluctant to claim the group played a part in the planning or logistics of the attack itself.
The Belgian government has been roundly criticised for its lack of action regarding Lassoued prior to his attack, with some questioning how authorities were unaware of Lassoued’s criminal background in Sweden, his recorded radicalism in Tunisia, or his multiple failed attempts at claiming asylum in European countries.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo blamed a lack of communication and transparency among countries saying, “We did not have that important information and it could have allowed our security services to make a different assessment. When potentially dangerous people travel, our services need to know about it.”
