Spain Arrests 9 in Brussels Attacks Investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/world/europe/spain-brussels-attacks-arrests.html

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BARCELONA, Spain — Nine men were arrested on Tuesday in a series of early morning raids in and around Barcelona, Spain, in connection with the March 2016 terrorist attacks in Brussels.

The arrests were a reminder that an international investigation continued 13 months after the attacks, which struck the Brussels airport and a subway station, killing 32 people, and three bombers.

Jordi Jané, the home affairs minister for the Catalonia region, said the arrests were made “in connection with the terrorist attacks that occurred in Belgium” last March, but he added that the precise role of the men was still being investigated. The suspects were believed to have links with “an organized group associated with jihadi terrorism,” he said.

Eight of the nine men are Moroccans, and one is a Spaniard, the police said. All are ages 30 to 40 and most have criminal records, the authorities said.

Josep Lluís Trapero, head of the Catalan police, told reporters that four of the nine men “can be linked” directly to the Brussels attacks. “They had contact there, with the terrorists at the subway and the airport,” he said.

The raids took place in Barcelona and several other communities in Catalonia: Cornellà de Llobregat, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Masquefa, Ripollet and Santa Coloma de Gramenet.

The arrests followed an eight-month investigation, in which the Belgian police were involved, Mr. Jané said. There was no evidence, he said, that the men were planning an attack in Catalonia, although “we cannot rule this out.”

In a telephone interview, Eric Van der Sypt, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said the investigation had been opened by a Belgian judge about eight months ago.

The Brussels attacks emerged out of a terrorist network that also was involved in attacks in and around Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people, the deadliest such atrocity on French soil since World War II.

The authorities said 16 people were being held in Belgium on suspicion of involvement in either the Paris or the Brussels attacks; there have been no trials or convictions. Salah Abdeslam, who officials say provided logistical support for the Paris attacks, was captured in Brussels on March 18, 2016, an event that may have precipitated the Brussels attacks four days later. (Mr. Abdeslam awaits trial in France.)

VRT News, the Flemish public broadcaster, reported that three of the nine people arrested in Spain had been in Belgium a few days before the Brussels attacks and had been in touch with Yassine Atar, who was found to have had the keys for a safe house used by the Brussels attackers.

Mr. Atar, who is in jail on an unrelated investigation, is a cousin of Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, brothers who helped carry out and died in the Brussels attacks.

Mr. Atar’s brother, Oussama Atar, 32, a Belgian of Moroccan ancestry, is still sought by the authorities as a possible coordinator of the Paris and Brussels attackers.