http://www.newsbharati.com/ Belgium- Police Arrested two, over 'New Year's Eve terror attack plot'
Belgian police arrest two over 'New Year's Eve terror attack plot' Belgian police arrested two people in different parts of the country on Sunday and Monday, both suspected of plotting an attack against the police and key landmarks in Brussels on New Year's Eve, federal prosecutors have revealed. The investigation revealed "the threat of serious attacks that would target several emblematic places in Brussels and be committed during the end-of-year holidays," the prosecutor's office said. Belgian media, citing anonymous official sources, added that the attacks were to be aimed at the police headquarters near to Brussels's central square, the Grand Place, although official sources were still to confirm the precise targets. A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the main square was thought to be the focus of the planned attack: "On the Grand Place, there are a lot of people, as well as soldiers and police who are patrolling, as well as a police station nearby," the source said. Police and soldiers in Brussels have also been ordered to take special precautions to ensure their own safety, said Benoit Ramacker, spokesman for the Belgian government's Crisis Centre. Police and army patrols were greatly beefed up in Brussels following the Paris attacks, and Ramacker said a new official threat assessment conducted on Monday evening after the latest searches and arrests concluded the officers and soldiers deployed to protect others from extremist attacks might become targets themselves "in the exercise of their functions". The arrests came hours after the Belgian authorities announced that they were moving to terror alert Level 3, which would remain in force until next week, indicating that an attack is "possible and likely" - the status is just one notch below the highest Level 4 alert of "serious and imminent" which caused Brussels to be placed in complete lockdown following November's attacks in Paris. During house searches in Brussels and a neighbouring province as well as Liege, a total of six people had been taken in for questioning but four of them had been released, they said yesterday. The remaining two, both understood to be male, were placed under arrest on charges including participation in the activities of a terrorist group as a leader or recruiter with the aim of committing terrorist offences as principal or secondary actor, the prosecutor's office said. Police found military clothing and Isil propaganda material but no weapons or explosives and the searches were not linked to the attacks in Paris in November, which killed 130 people, prosecutors said. The prosecutor's office also said computer material was seized and is being examined. The prosecutor's office said no additional details would be made public, but that the probe was not connected to the November 13 attacks in Paris, in which numerous suspects, including presumed ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and fugitive Salah Abdeslam, had connections to Belgium. Prosecutors said in a statement yesterday that they uncovered "serious threats of attacks targeting several symbolic sites in Brussels which would be committed during the New Year's festivities. Maximum On November 21, the terror alert level for the Belgian capital area was temporarily raised to its maximum level after authorities announced they had received credible information that an attack could be imminent. Belgium has also been one of the leading sources in Europe for foreigners recruited to fight for Isil. In January, Belgian anti-terrorism units broke up what they said was an imminent attack on police by raiding a house in the eastern city of Verviers, killing two suspected jihadis and arresting a third. Their main quarry, however, was not there: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who went on to become the suspected ringleader of the attacks in Paris. Brussels city leaders are expected to decide today whether the annual New Year's Eve fireworks display, scheduled for another central square near the Grand Place, should go ahead as scheduled.
Boris Nemtsov murder investigators name Chechen mastermind
Russian opposition leader’s supporters dismiss claim as attempt to cover up potential involvement of high-level figures
The investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov is coming to a close, say Russian investigators, who named Ruslan Mukhudinov, the personal driver of a top commander of one of Chechnya’s armed battalions, as the mastermind behind the attack.
The opposition leader’s associates and supporters said the announcement showed the investigation had been an attempt to cover up the potential involvement of higher-level Chechen figures, right up to the region’s pro-Moscow leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Ilya Yashin, Nemtsov’s political ally, said: “The investigators are carrying out a political order to cover up the real culprits, not only the real mastermind but even the real organisers. Mukhudinov was an ordinary driver, it’s absolutely clear he was not the initiator of this crime.”
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigative committee, told news agencies that Mukhudinov was the “organiser and mastermind” behind the assassination.
Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for Nemtsov’s family, told Interfax that Mukhudinov could be a “low-level organiser” of the killing but he believed the hit was ordered by high-level officials.
“Besides, even Mukhudinov has not been caught, not been questioned and nobody knows where he is, so it’s impossible to say he ordered it,” Prokhorov said.
Nemtsov was shot outside the Kremlin as he walked home late at night with a female companion in February. The killing sent shockwaves through Russia’s opposition movement, and the president, Vladimir Putin, said the killers must be apprehended.
Five Chechen men were quickly arrested on charges of involvement in the killing. One, Zaur Dadayev, admitted involvement but later said his confession was made under duress. Dadayev was the deputy commander of one of Kadyrov’s battalions. Yashin said that the men behind bars may have been involved in the murder but as low-level pawns rather than the people who had planned and ordered it.
Mukhudinov is believed to have been the personal driver of Ruslan Geremeyev, who was a senior commander of the battalion. Investigators were unable to question Geremeyev, who was apparently kept under guard in Chechnya and is now believed to have left the republic. Mukhudinov is also on the run and has not been apprehended or questioned by investigators. Markin said it was only a matter of time before Mukhudinov was arrested.
Yashin said the investigation was proceeding well until the lead investigator was taken off the case and replaced over the summer – he believes to prevent the inquiry from coming too close to the Chechen leadership.
“The trail leads to Grozny and to the offices of top officials in Grozny,” said Yashin. “Ramzan Kadyrov should at the very least be questioned. It seems implausible that the top officers of his battalions would carry out a murder without at least informing him of it. Whether or not the trail stops at Kadyrov or whether it leads further, to offices in Moscow, that is an open question and should be worked on by the investigators.”
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In October, Kadyrov denied any link to the Nemtsov murder and suggested the real killers were inside Nemtsov’s close circle. Geremeyev has not spoken out about the murder, but Kadyrov has previously said “everyone knows” that Geremeyev was not involved.
There have been a number of killings of Kadyrov’s personal enemies as far afield as Moscow, Dubai and Vienna in recent years, though the Chechen leader has denied involvement in all of them. Soon after the initial arrests, Kadyrov wrote on Instagram that Dadayev was a “patriot of Russia”. Shortly after the killing, Putin presented Kadyrov with a medal, interpreted by many as a sign that the investigation should not touch the Chechen leader.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was a vocal if marginal figure in contemporary Russian politics. At the time of his death he was working on a report into Russian military involvement in the Ukraine conflict. The report was later published by Yashin.
Initially, leaks from the investigation claimed Nemtsov may have been killed for remarks he made in defence of the slain cartoonists of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, although his associates said this claim was also part of a cover-up to obscure political reasons for the murder.
Earlier this month, a Moscow court ruled that the murder was not political.
“During the course of the investigation we have positively established that the killing of Nemtsov was not in any way connected with his work as a state official, politician or public activist,” one of the investigators told the court, Interfax reported. The court agreed with the assessement.
In a recent column for the Moscow Times, Nemtsov’s daughter Zhanna Nemtsova said she believed her father was killed “for his views, for daring to express his position, for his unwillingness to be indifferent or apathetic”. She criticised Russian politicians and society for their unwillingness to demand an objective investigation into the case.
At his annual press conference earlier this month, Putin said he had not discussed the killing with Kadyrov because it was inappropriate. Of Nemtsov, he said: “I knew him personally and our relations had not always been bad. I never quarrelled with him but he chose this path of political competition by making personal attacks and the like ... However, this does not mean at all that the man should have been killed.”
This has focused as ongoing inquiry in spy ring which is involved in a leading aircraft service man within the Indian Air Force deployed at Bhatinda.
