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Belgian Police Detain Another Suspect in Terror Case


Belgian soldiers patrol outside the European Council headquarters in central Brussels, Jan, 21, 2015.
Belgian soldiers patrol outside the European Council headquarters in central Brussels, Jan, 21, 2015.

Belgian police have made a fourth arrest as part of their investigation into Islamist militants suspected of plotting attacks on police, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Last Thursday police killed two men in Verviers in eastern Belgium during one of several raids against an Islamist group which officials said was about to launch “terrorist attacks on a grand scale.”

An investigating magistrate charged the latest detainee, a Belgian national named only as Abdelmounaim H., with taking part in the activities of a terrorist group following his arrest on Tuesday, the federal prosecutors' office said in a statement.

Belgian media said the man, born in 1993, had turned himself in.

Prosecutors said they were now holding a total of four people in connection with the raids and were also waiting for the extradition of a fifth suspect held by Greek police.

In Verviers, police also found the passport of a Dutch national. Dutch authorities said on Tuesday they had searched the man's home but had not found him.

Prosecutors for the first time identified the two men killed by police last Thursday as Sofiane A., born in 1988, who had held both Belgian and Moroccan nationality, and Khalid B., a Belgian national born in 1991.

Last week police also arrested three people at Charleroi airport suspected of planning to go to Syria, where thousands of Europeans have gone to fight with militants in that country's civil war.

One of the three, a Belgian woman born in 1993, was accompanied by her 13-month-old child and had sought to join her husband in Syria, the prosecutors' office said.

All three were charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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