Police arrest suspected accomplice of Brussels Jewish Museum killer

Frenchman reportedly met Mehdi Nemmouche, who spent time with Islamic State in Syria, while both were in jail

By AFP and ToI Staff 12 December 2014, 11:55 pm

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A picture released on June 1, 2014, shows the 29-year-old suspected gunman in the Brussels Jewish Museum attack, French-Algerian Mehdi Nemmouche. (AFP)

PARIS — A Frenchman was detained Friday as investigators probed his ties to Mehdi Nemmouche, the jihadist charged with killing four people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in May.

The 27-year-old man, from the southern French city of Marseille, was arrested Tuesday and is suspected of being an accomplice of Nemmouche, according to a law enforcement source. He is named in a European arrest warrant.

The man was arrested along with four other people who have since been released, during a police raid. Weapons were found in the course of the arrests.

The suspect, who has a criminal record, met Nemmouche while both were behind bars previously, the law enforcement source said.

People pay their respects in front of a makeshift memorial at the entrance of the Jewish Museum in Brussels, on May 25, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/GEORGES GOBET)

A Paris appeals court is to rule soon on whether the suspect should be turned over to Belgian authorities, a move he has opposed.

Nemmouche, 29, a Frenchman of Algerian origin who spent more than a year fighting with the Islamic State 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 seven months ago.