French Jihadist Killings in Belgium

The French Jihadist Killings in Belgium: This is Just the Beginning

By Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
June 2, 2014

A brief note: this was originally written before the alleged killer was apprehended, and was then modified based on last-minute breaking news

At around 3:50 pm on Saturday, May 24, a man dressed in a blue sweater and baseball cap walked casually into the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Pulling a Kalashnikov rifle from a black bag, he shot and killed four people– an Israeli couple, a French national waiting to enter the museum and a Belgian museum volunteer. He then nonchalantly walked away.

By the following Saturday, French authorities in Marseille had arrested 29-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche while performing a routine customs check at the local bus station. Nemmouche, who boarded the bus in Amsterdam, had recently returned to his native France from Syria, where he is believed to have fought alongside the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

ENDS

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