A third suspect has been charged with terrorist activities over a foiled plot to attack France, Belgian prosecutors said on Saturday.
The alleged extremist, identified only as 35-year-old YA, has been charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
The development was the latest step in a joint investigation by France and Belgium in the wake of the Brussels terror attack that killed 32 people last month.
Two other men, Abderrahmane A and Rabah M, are also being held in Belgium over the same failed plot to attack the French capital.
The main suspect is Reda Kriket, who was arrested in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt last week after police found weapons and explosives at his home.
The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said no specific target had been identified for the foiled attack, but that the cache of weapons showed an imminent act of “extreme violence” had probably been prevented.
The Netherlands is also holding a French national in connection with the same plot. The man is opposing extradition to France.
Kriket, 32, was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by a Belgian court last July for recruiting Islamist fighters for Syria.
European authorities have been under pressure to crack down on cross-border jihadi networks after close links emerged between the attackers blamed for the November Paris attacks and those behind last week’s suicide blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station in the city.
A Paris court convicted Abderrahmane A in 2005 for having played a role in the assassination of Afghan resistance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by al-Qaida a few days before the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.
