Five terror suspects detained in two days of Belgian raids

Authorities still looking for fugitive Salah Abdeslam, suspected of involvement in the November Paris attacks

By Agencies and ToI Staff 21 December 2015, 2:50 pm

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Armed special forces of the police during a raid in the Antoine Dansaertstraat - Rue Antoine Dansaert street in the city center of Brussels, December 20, 2015. (Photo by AFP/Belga/ Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belgium OUT)

Belgian authorities have detained five people, including two brothers, after two days of raids related to Paris attacks.

The federal prosecutor’s office said two people were detained following a house search Monday in the Laeken district of Brussels. On Sunday evening, another Brussels house was searched on orders from an investigating judge specializing in terrorism. Two brothers found there were taken in for questioning, as well as a friend.

The prosecutor’s office said an analysis of phone records led to Sunday’s search. Authorities said they found no weapons or explosives at either residence, and did not identify those detained.

The investigating judge will decide later on whether to keep the five in custody.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutor confirmed the detained suspects did not include not fugitive Salah Abdeslam, who is one of Europe’s most wanted men over his alleged involvement in the November 13 attacks that left 130 dead in the French capital.

The Sunday search took place in a building on the outer limits of Molenbeek — an area with a large immigrant population — and less than a kilometer away from Brussels’ central Grand Place square, one of the city’s most popular tourist sites.

Pedestrians were evacuated as the raid took place, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. local time.

The arrest warrant issued for 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, suspected of involvement in the November 13, 2015. terror attacks in Paris. 'Do not intervene yourself,' warns the message issued November 15, 2015. — The arrest warrant issued for 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, suspected of involvement in the November 13, 2015. terror attacks in Paris. ‘Do not intervene yourself,’ warns the message issued November 15, 2015.

Belgian police are still actively looking for 26-year-old, Brussels-born Abdeslam, suspected of having played a key role in the Paris attacks and understood to have returned to the Belgian capital the day after the bloodshed.

An international arrest warrant is out on Abdeslam, who lived in Molenbeek.

A source close to the Belgian investigation told AFP earlier Sunday that Abdeslam made it past three police checks when friends drove him from Paris to Brussels in the hours after the coordinated gun and suicide attacks.

Belgium had so far arrested eight people on suspicion of involvement in the terror assaults, which have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.