Belgium arrests 10 linked to IS foreign fighters network

Belgian police on Tuesday arrested ten people in the Brussels area who were allegedly part of a network recruiting people to fight with the Islamic State group in Syria, prosecutors said.

The ten were arrested during raids in several areas of the Belgian capital, including the Molenbeek quarter where several of the key suspects in the November Paris attacks lived.

The federal prosecutor’s office said however that the arrests were not linked to the Paris bomb and gun attacks, claimed by IS, which left 130 people dead and hundreds injured.

“The raids were carried out as part of an investigation into a recruitment network linked to Islamic State. The investigation helped determine that several people had travelled to Syria to join Islamic State,” it said.

The raids were ordered by a counter-terrorism judge in the eastern city of Liege who will decide later in the day whether to continue holding the suspects, the statement said.

Investigators were studying mobile phones and computer equipment seized in a total of nine raids across Brussels.

Belgium has produced more jihadist fighters relative to its population than any other country in Europe, with some 500 believed to have gone to fight in the Middle East where many have joined IS.

Belgian police are holding nine people in connection with the November 13 attacks in Paris as it emerges that the onslaught was largely organised and coordinated from Belgium.

Three others were released but remain charged in connection with the attacks.

Earlier this month, the authorities identified three safe houses used by key Paris suspects — in Brussels, in Charleroi, an hour’s drive south of the capital, and in Auvelais, a village near the French border.

Thirty-one people went on trial Monday in Brussels — half of them in absentia — on charges they belonged to a “terrorist group” that recruited for IS and other groups in Syria between 2012 and 2014.

One of those present, Khalid Zerkani, was sentenced last July to 12 years in jail for encouraging people to go to Syria in connection with another network.

Zerkani was convicted of recruiting Abelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, who both died in a French police raid a few days after the Paris attacks.