AN ENDURING THREAT: EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS THEN AND NOW MOHAMMED BAKKALI:Bakkali was arrested on 26 November 2015 in connection with the Paris attacks and accused of playing a leading role in planning the attack. He has a history of petty crime365 and lived in Auvelais, renting a car which was used to travel to safe houses in Auvelais, Charleroi and 366 Schaerbeek. His extradition to France was approved on 9 June 2016 over claims he rented the apartment in which the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks were made.367 Bakkali is also reported to have been a key suspect in an alleged “dirty bomb plot”, with police raids finding ten hours of footage in Bakkali’s wife’s flat from a hidden camera targeting the house of an 368 executive from the Centre for the Study of Nuclear Energy who had access to radioactive isotopes. ! ! 365 Cruickshank, P., ‘Paris attacks: Directives came from operatives in Brussels, investigators say’, CNN, 7 January 2016, available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/07/europe/paris-attacks-brussels-operatives/, last visited: 9 August 2016. 366 Wolgelenter, M., ‘ISIS Militant Returned to Belgium Before Paris Attacks’, The New York Times, 13 January 2016, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/world/europe/belgium-paris-attacks-safe-houses.html, last visited: 9 August 2016. 367 ‘Paris attacks: Belgian judge approves extradition of terror suspects Mohamed Abrini and Mohamed Bakkali to France’, The Independent, 9 June 2016. 368 Holehouse, M., ‘All Belgian residents issued with iodine tablets to protect against radiation’, The Telegraph, 28 April 2016. ! ! 33 !
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