A couple in Belgium has been charged with aiding an ISIS militant who took part in the Paris terror attack. Investigators are linking these two to both the Paris and Brussels attacks. In fact, he was one of the suicide bombers in Brussels; he blew himself up on the metro attack. He's connected to the Paris attacks because investigators have concluded that he rented an apartment in the Belgian city of Charlevoix, just south of Brussels, that the Paris attackers used to organise the attack, from the couple who provided the fake documents to rent that apartment.
The Couple used fake documents
for rent an apartment in the Brussels. A neighborhood of 4A and it's believed that Abdel-Salam. He is the one lone survivor from the Paris attacks and who's right now behind bars in Paris, but he was hiding out in that Brussels apartment. A complicated web but basically essentially to lay this all out Belgian, investigators say this couple provided the fake documents needed to get two apartments where either suspected terrorists were hiding or an apartment that was being used to plan to Paris attacks. It is only just a few months away from the one-year anniversary of the Brussels attacks.
How security agencies have responded and how they're taking action now.
The alert level is still high in the city of Brussels.
But even with that being said there still has not been another attack here since the Brussels attacks in march of last year. Also investigators have made a number of important arrests including this couple, and 20 or so other arrests have been made in connection to both the Brussels and the Paris attacks. So Belgian intelligence community members say they're making progress here and they're dismantling this cell.
There's a number of concerning issues
We've had a number of police strikes just last week in the Brussels neighborhood. There was a police strike, where police officers were complaining about long hours and being overworked and that district being under staff. Some intelligence agents have also complained about there being a backlog of work; they're getting so much intelligence and that they can't keep up with it. The intelligence community is citing some successes but also thinking that there are some issues here that need to be worked on and improved.
