5 held as accomplices in Brussels Jewish museum killings

Police detain 3 men and 2 women for alleged association with Mehdi Nemmouche, the suspect in deadly attack

People pay their respects in front of a makeshift memorial at the entrance of the Jewish Museum in Brussels following a deadly terrorist attack, on May 25, 2014. (AFP/Georges Gobet)

PARIS — French police on Tuesday detained three men and two women as part of a probe into Mehdi Nemmouche, who is suspected of killing four people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in May, a judicial source said.

Nemmouche, 29, a Frenchman of Algerian origin who spent more than a year fighting with Islamic extremists in Syria, was arrested in the southern city of Marseille shortly after an Israeli couple, a French woman and a Belgian were shot dead at the museum in central Brussels.

He was caught on a bus from Brussels carrying a revolver and Kalashnikov rifle in his luggage, and has since been charged with “murder in a terrorist context.”

Those arrested on Tuesday include people Nemmouche may have met while in detention, said a source close to the case. Further details about them were not known.

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