Belgium Called In The NSA To Help Catch Paris Attacker
Source: buzzfeed
Belgium Called In The NSA To Help Catch Paris Attacker
A breakthrough in the four-month-long manhunt for key suspect in the Paris attacks only came when Belgian officials asked the NSA for assistance, two investigators told BuzzFeed News. Read the full story here.
posted on Aug. 21, 2016, at 6:12 p.m.
Mitch Prothero
Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The breakthrough in the manhunt for a key suspect in last year’s attack on Paris that left 130 people dead only came when Belgian officials asked the US National Security Agency (NSA) for help.
According to a Belgian counterterrorism officer and a police investigator, they turned to the NSA in the search for Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect from the attacks, after Belgian police spent four futile months raiding apartments around Brussels as part of a Europe-wide manhunt.
The two officers told BuzzFeed News that the Belgian government asked the NSA for assistance in tracking the mobile phones of several people attending a funeral of one of the other Paris attackers in early March, in the hopes that they would lead police to Abdeslam. He was apprehended after a shoot-out in the Belgian capital on March 18.
The key break came after the identification via DNA testing of Chakib Akrouh, who died in a suicide-vest explosion three days after the Paris attacks during a confrontation with police. Once his remains, which were badly damaged in the explosion, were identified, Akrouh’s family planned a funeral in early March.
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Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/belgium-called-in-the-nsa-to-help-catch-paris-attacker?utm_term=.jyQJLR6Ezv#.mx9ngW1649
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