The Federal Prosecutor's Office today (Friday) corrected a piece of information which appeared in the French daily newspaper Le Monde concerning Mohammed Belkaïd. This man was killed by police on March 15th during the attack on a flat in the Rue du Dries in the Forest area of Brussels, after an exchange of fire during a police raid.
The Office stressed, “The information which appeared in Le Monde regarding an hearing claimed to have taken place involving Mohammed Belkaïd was false.” It went further, “In fact, there were several interviews for individuals after the attacks but Belkaïd was never involved in them.”
In the article in question, the French daily newspaper, which has been able to consult the investigators' file, which made it possible for Belgian police to arrest the Paris attacks fugitive, retraced the manhunt for Salah Abdelsam.
On December 4th last year, Belgian police issued a wanted notice concerning two men present in a vehicle with Salah Abdeslam during a border check on September 9th, 2015 at the Austrian-Hungarian border, holding false Belgian identity papers.
One of these men held papers indicating the name “Samir Bouzid.” Four days after the Paris attacks, this individual was filmed by surveillance cameras at a Western Union branch, in Brussels, transferring 750 euros to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, Abdelhamid Abaaoud's cousin.
During the evening of the Paris attacks, Boulahcen may have been contact by text with the perpetrators of these attacks.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office says that it is “more than reasonable” that Samir Bouzid is the alias of Mohamed Belkaïd, an Algerian, aged 35. He was, in the end, killed on March 15th during the attack at the flat on the Rue du Dries.
The investigators say there is a “high probability” that Belkaïd was the recipient of the text sent on the evening of November 13th by one of the suicide bombers from the Bataclan theatre to the mobile telephone located in Belgium. The text said, “We have left, the mission has begun.”
(Source: Belga)
