Sunday 28 February 2016

Algeria detains man with suspected links to Paris attacks

Algeria detains man with suspected links to Paris attacks
By frank








A man with dual Algerian and Belgian citizenship has been detained in Algeria over suspected links to the November 13 attacks in Paris, authorities said over the weekend.

The court in the city of Bejaia, 250 kilometres east of the capital Algiers, said 29-year-old Zahir Mehdaoui was arrested on Tuesday over suspected “links to the terrorist attacks in Paris”. He is also suspected of “possible implication in terrorist activities” and belonging to a terrorist group active overseas.

According to the AFP news agency, the suspect, who is a resident of Brussels, surrendered himself after being summoned by the magistrate’s court in Akbou, near Bejaia.

Algerian newspaper Le Soir d’AlgĂ©rie reported that Mehdaoui allegedly had close ties with 28-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

Abaaoud, also a Belgian citizen, died when police laid siege to his hideout flat in Saint Denis, north of Paris, five days later.

Le Soir d’AlgĂ©rie reported that Mehdaoui had left Algeria in 2012, spending time in both Turkey and Greece before moving to Brussels. In 2014 he married a Belgian woman, the paper said.

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