{"id":24480,"date":"2016-04-09T02:01:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T02:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/belgium-arrests-paris-attacks-suspect-mohamed\/"},"modified":"2016-04-09T02:01:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T02:01:09","slug":"belgium-arrests-paris-attacks-suspect-mohamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/belgium-arrests-paris-attacks-suspect-mohamed\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgium arrests Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Police also looking into whether Mohamed Abrini, arrested along with four others, is the so-called “man in the hat”.}<\/p>\n

Belgian authorities confirmed on Friday the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini along with four other people, including a man they believe may have helped the Brussels bombers.<\/p>\n

The prosecutors said they were also looking into whether Abrini is the so-called “man in the hat”, the surviving third suspect seen on CCTV images next to the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Brussels airport on March 22.<\/p>\n

“We are investigating if Abrini can be identified as the third person at the Brussels national airport, the so-called man with the hat,” said prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt.<\/p>\n

Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, has been on Europe’s most wanted list since the November 13 Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed.<\/p>\n

He was last seen two days before the attacks in a motorway service station CCTV video driving with another Paris attacks suspect – Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last month – towards the French capital from Belgium. <\/p>\n

The car they drove was used in the attacks, in which Abdeslam’s elder brother was a suicide bomber. <\/p>\n

Second metro bomber?<\/p>\n

Another man arrested on Friday, identified as Osama K, may have been present at the suicide bomb attack in the Brussels underground station of Maelbeek, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The man was seen in the company of Khalid el-Bakraoui before he blew himself up in the metro, and was also filmed buying the bags used in deadly attacks that same day on the Brussels airport.<\/p>\n

“The investigators are now verifying whether Osama K can be positively identified as being the second person present at the time of the attack in the Maelbeek subway station,” Van Der Sypt said.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said if the metro link is confirmed, that would signal a “big scoop” for authorities.<\/p>\n

“We know that this man was seen by the bags that the Belgian airport bombers used in their attack – they hid their explosives in luggage – so this is someone that they’ve also been looking for extremely intensively over the last few weeks,” Butler said.<\/p>\n

Media had previously reported about a second underground attacker, but officials had not confirmed that.<\/p>\n

Coordinated attacks<\/p>\n

The attacks on Brussels airport and a metro train last month killed 32 people and wounded hundreds in the worst such incident in Belgian history.<\/p>\n

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), which claimed responsibility for the Brussels bombings, also took credit for coordinated attacks in Paris in November .<\/p>\n

Friday’s arrest of five suspects came a day after Belgian authorities released photos and video of the “man in the hat” airport suspect.<\/p>\n

Five hours after the initial detentions, authorities were still carrying out a raid in the same Anderlecht area of Brussels.<\/p>\n

The government and top security officials gathered in a national security council meeting in the wake of Friday’s detention to assess the consequences of the operation.<\/p>\n

\"Abrini,<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Police also looking into whether Mohamed Abrini, arrested along with four others, is the so-called “man in the hat”.} Belgian authorities confirmed on Friday the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini along with four other people, including a man they believe may have helped the Brussels bombers. The prosecutors said they were also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}