2015 Paris Attack : Key Suspect Arrested In Belgium

Brussels: Belgian police arrested the key suspect in the 2015 November Paris attack on Friday from Belgium.

Mohamed Abrini, the key suspect, is likely to be the “man in the hat” seen on CCTV before bomb blasts in the Brussels airport departure hall on March 22. Belgian by nationality, Abrini , thought to have helped prepare the November 13 bombing and shooting attack that killed 130 people in the French capital, was held with two others.

Five arrests were made on Friday. One suspect, Osama Krayem, will be investigated over the bomb attack on the metro that followed the airport bombing.

The 31-year-old suspect was seized close to the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, where he was long known to police for petty crimes. The prosecutors said that Krayem, detained with another man, was checked by German police in October using a fake Syrian passport in a car rented by Salah Abdeslam, prime surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, who was detained in Brussels three weeks ago.

Krayem is suspected of being the man seen on CCTV with a suicide bomber before he struck the Brussels metro on March 22 and of buying the holdalls used by the attackers that day.

The arrests mark a signal success for Belgian security services, which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organized the attacks in Paris and, four months later, those in the Belgian capital that killed 32 people, four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam.