Brussels shooting: Man arrested on suspicion of supplying weapon

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A 44-year-old Tunisian man suspected of complicity with the perpetrator of the attack in Brussels on 16 October was charged with “murder in a terrorist context” and imprisoned on Thursday, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office announced.

The man arrested on Wednesday was suspected of being involved in supplying the automatic rifle used by the attacker, Abdesalem Lassoued.

Lassoued, a 45-year-old radicalised Tunisian who was illegally resident in Belgium, was shot dead by Belgian police the day after the attack that killed two Swedes.

His alleged accomplice, now in prison, identified as “Lamjed K., born on 17/08/1979, of Tunisian nationality”, was arrested on Wednesday in Tervuren, south of Brussels.

He was then presented to the examining magistrate in charge of the investigation, who decided to charge him with “murder and attempted murder in a terrorist context” as well as “participation in the activities of a terrorist group”.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office also stresses that, at this stage, it can only confirm “a potential link with the weapon used in the terrorist attack on 16 October 2023”.

The attack, carried out with “an AR-15 type weapon of war”, said the public prosecutor the following day, killed two Swedes, a man in his sixties and a man in his seventies, who had come to support their national football team playing against Belgium in Brussels that evening.

A third Swedish supporter, aged 70, was also seriously injured and was still in hospital on Tuesday.

In addition to the Belgian investigation, anti-terrorist investigations were also launched in France on 17 October, following information passed on by the Belgian judicial authorities.

And on Monday evening, two Tunisians living in the Paris region were charged in Paris and placed in pre-trial detention. The investigation has yet to establish their links with the attacker.