Belgium the 'hotbed' for terrorists? Belgian arms dealer confesses to supplying Charlie Hebdo attackers. (Haaretz).
The terrorists who perpetrated the attacks in Paris last week got their weapons from an arms dealer in Brussels.
The dealer, a known figure in Brussels’ underworld, turned himself in to local police on Tuesday, according to Belgian media.
Federal police, who searched the suspect’s apartment, found papers linking him to a transaction with Amedy Coulibaly, the jihadist who murdered four Jewish men and held others hostage at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in east Paris on Friday.
According to the local press, the man sold Coulibaly the Skorpion submachine guns he used in the attack, as well as the rocket propelled grenade launcher and the Kalashnikov automatic assault rifles that Said and Cherif Kouachi used to perpetrate the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The weapons were purchased near the Midi railway station in downtown Brussels for less than 5,000 euros, according to the reports.
French media reports Wednesday morning said that the funding for the arms purchase was simply a standard loan of 6,000 euros ($7,050) that Coulibaly took out on December 4 from the French financial-services firm Cofidis. He used his real name but falsely stated his monthly income on the loan declaration, a statement the company didn't bother to check, the reports say.
The suspect, a known arms smuggler and dealer in the underworld, from the town of Charleroi, turned himself in on Tuesday to the Charleroi police and asked to confess to supplying the weapons.
He told police that a few months ago Coulibaly had initiated contact with him, seeking to buy a car. The man said that once he realized that Coulibaly was a jihadist terrorist, he feared that the detectives would reach him because of the link between them. Hmmmm......If you look at the numbers Belgium is the 'hotbed' for would be jihadis, considering the small population of the country. Read the full story here.
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