Belgian prime minister Charles Michel has confirmed one of three suspects arrested in Brussels on Saturday was present in Paris on Friday.
Prime minister Charles Michel was speaking after Belgian authorities made three arrests in connection with Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris, in a series of raids on Saturday afternoon in the Belgian capital.
Several police vans, sniffer dogs and bomb disposal experts closed off Rue Dubois-Thorn in the commune of Molenbeek in Brussels on Saturday afternoon and seized a black Volkswagen vehicle.
One resident on the street told The Irish Times that police arrived at 4pm local time and surrounded a black car before seizing it.
“We are shocked, absolutely. It is a quiet area. We have been told that a bomb was inside the car,” she said.
Black vehicle
Bomb disposal experts arrived at the scene at 5.30pm, while a car removal truck left the area at 6.20pm local time carrying a black vehicle.
Belgian justice minister Koen Geens confirmed that "multiple searches and arrests" had been made on Saturday, which they were related to a vehicle with a Belgian number plate.
Local media reports said a parking ticket had been found in a car located near the site of one of the Paris attacks on Friday night, linking the car to Molenbeek.
The Brussels suburb, located just 3km west of Brussels’s Grand Place, was also the site of a number of counter-terrorism raids in January, just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
A multicultural and quiet residential area, it has a strong Moroccan and Turkish population.
A group of four young men who spoke to The Irish Times just metres from the scene said they had seen reports of the arrests on local media and came straight to the area.
“We did not believe it. It’s a very quiet, calm area,” said Ibrahim a 22-year-old university student who is originally from Morocco but moved to Brussels at the age of three.
His friend Yassim (20), who was born in Brussels to Moroccan parents and is also a university student in Brussels, said he had been aware of Jihadi links in the area in January, but said he had no knowledge of any terrorist activity.
All four friends attended secondary school in a school located at the end of Rue Dubois-Thorn where the arrests were made.
Centre of jihadist activity
Belgium has found itself at the centre of jihadist activity in Europe, with the country of 11 million people believed to have the highest number of so-called foreign fighters per capita in the European Union.
Armed police and soldiers have been a visible presence in the streets of Belgium and guarding public buildings including embassies, schools and places of worship since the terrorist attack in the Jewish Museum in central Brussels in June 2014, in which four people were killed.
In January, two people were killed by police in the southern part of the country as part of a series of counter-terrorism raids across the country, with more than a dozen people arrested in counter-terrorism raids, including in Molenbeek, weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
In August, a heavily-armed Belgian national who bordered an Amsterdam-Paris train in Brussels was overpowered by passengers after he opened fire on the packed train.
Evidence of strong links between Belgian and French jihadist networks have emerged over the last few months, with the main suspect in the Jewish museum attacks a Frenchman who had recently returned to France after fighting in Syria.
