Two men “likely to be linked to the author of the attack” of Brussels, Abdessalem Lassoued, committed on October 16, were charged by a Parisian investigating judge, announced on Tuesday the national anti -terrorist prosecution.
These are two Tunisians, domiciled in the Paris region, who were indicted on Monday evening for association of criminal terrorist criminals and for complicity in assassination in relation to a terrorist company, then were placed in pre -trial detention. Investigations must still specify their links with the assailant.
The two suspects have been forty and fifty years old, and one of them has been in France for almost twenty years.
An investigation had been opened in Paris on October 17, the day after the attack which cost the lives to two Swedes, following information “transmitted by the Belgian judicial authorities”.
Four days after this attack perpetrated by Abdessalem Lassoued, a 45 -year -old Tunisian undocumented, the Belgian Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, announced his resignation from the government.
The minister said “he learned that Tunisia had claimed in August 2022 the extradition of Abdessalem Lassoued, a request untreated by the Brussels prosecutor’s office which was recipient”.
“The competent magistrate did not follow up on this extradition request and the file was not processed,” he said. “It is an individual, monumental fault, an unacceptable fault, with dramatic consequences,” he added.
Vincent Van Quickenborne said he assumes responsibility by resigning.
Abdesalem Lassoued was known to the Belgian authorities for crimes, including death threats made against an asylum seeker, according to justice. But he was not relieved in the database of the Coordination Organization for the Analysis of the Menace (OCAM), a federal agency.
The author of the Brussels attack died on Tuesday October 17, 2023 by succumbing to his injuries in the hospital. He had been touched by bullets during his arrest.
According to the Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, this asylum seeker was sentenced to Tunisia “for common law offenses”, but was not reported for a terrorist risk.
He had asked for asylum in Belgium in November 2019. He was known to the police for facts suspicious of human trafficking, (of) illegal and (of) affected by state security.
