2 Suspects Killed in Gun Battle in Belgian Antiterror Raid

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/world/europe/police-raid-belgium.html

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BRUSSELS — Police officers killed two men after coming under fire in one of several raids against suspected terrorists that unfolded across Belgium on Thursday, barely a week after the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Thierry Werts, a representative of the Belgian federal prosecutor, said at a news conference in Brussels on Thursday night that the targets of the raids had been plotting “imminent” attacks on a substantial scale in Belgium.

The raids took aim at people who had joined Islamic extremist groups in Syria or other battle zones, and then returned to Europe — a potential threat that has consumed intelligence and security services since well before the Paris attacks, officials said.

The gun battle on Thursday took place in Verviers, a town in eastern Belgium about 75 miles from Brussels. The police were closing in on several suspects there in the early evening when they were met with bursts of semiautomatic fire, according to Eric Van Der Sypt of the prosecutor’s office. After several minutes, he said, the gunmen were “neutralized,” with two people dead and a third wounded and in custody. No police officers or civilians were hurt, he said.

Officials declined to provide further details about that raid, citing a continuing investigation. Mr. Van Der Sypt said the raids were focused on “several people who we think are an operational cell — certain people who came back from Syria.”

“During the investigation, we found that this group was about to commit terrorist attacks in Belgium,” he said, adding that the specific targets were the Belgian police.

“For the time being, there is no connection with what happened in Paris,” he said.

Earlier in the day, officials said a man had turned himself in on Wednesday, and they were looking into possible connections between him and the terrorists in Paris.

Mr. Van Der Sypt said the man had been arrested in Charleroi, south of Brussels, on suspicion of arms dealing. He surrendered to the police after a raid there on Tuesday.

Mr. Van Der Sypt said in a telephone interview that the authorities were investigating whether that man might be linked to the attacks in and near Paris last week. “For the moment, we certainly can’t confirm a link,” Mr. Van Der Sypt said.

He also said there was no direct connection between the raid in Charleroi and the raids carried out on Thursday.

Belgian news outlets reported that the police had evidence that the man arrested in Charleroi had arranged a sale of ammunition to Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four people and held others hostage at a kosher supermarket in Paris last Friday.

Mr. Van Der Sypt said at the news conference that a judge who specializes in handling terrorism cases had issued about 10 search warrants for the raids on Thursday, which were carried out in Brussels and in the surrounding Halle-Vilvoorde district, as well as in Verviers.

He said the Belgian authorities had been monitoring the suspects for weeks — starting “before the attacks in Paris, I would like to stress.” The suspects were all Belgian citizens, he said, but he declined to comment on their origins or their activities in Syria.

The raids in Brussels and Halle-Vilvoorde were still in progress, Mr. Van Der Sypt added. He promised further updates on Friday morning.

As the authorities across Western Europe redoubled their efforts to deal with jihadists and terrorism threats in the wake of the Paris attacks, several national leaders sought on Thursday to head off any backlash against Muslims.

“We must be clear between ourselves, lucid — the Muslims are the first victims of fanaticism, extremism and intolerance,” President François Hollande of France told an audience at the Institute of the Arab World in Paris.

Separately, the French authorities moved to reward an immigrant from Mali, Lassana Bathily, who was working in the kosher supermarket in Paris that Mr. Coulibaly seized. For helping customers hide and then assisting the police, he would be granted immediate citizenship, with the naturalization process cut short, the authorities said.

And in Germany, the authorities said they had detained a dual German and Tunisian citizen as a suspected member of the Islamic State, the extremist group, who had traveled to Syria via Turkey last May and returned to Germany in August.

A statement from the federal prosecutor’s office said the man, identified as Ayub B., 26, was suspected of having received military training and of recruiting fighters.