Report: Passenger from Brussels arrested with rifle in Marseille

Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) – Police in Marseille arrested a man who had arrived by train from Brussels with an automatic rifle and handgun.

The man, aged 29 and identified as Mehdi Nemmouche, was arrested at Marseille’s main train station, Saint-Charles, on May 29 and is currently held in suspicion with terrorist activity, the news agency AFP reported. He lives in Roubaix, which is located on the border between France and Belgium, 55 miles south of Brussels.

The weapons found in the man’s luggage “were arms of the same type used on May 24 in Brussels,” an unnamed source told AFP. The news agency did not say whether French authorities believe the Nemmouche killed four people on May 24 at the Jewish Museum of Belgium.

He also carried a small, portable video camera and a baseball cap similar to the one worn by the perpetrator of the Brussels Jewish museum, according to AFP.

On May 24, an unidentified man killed four people in a shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in central Brussels. He used what looked like an AK-47 assault rifle to kills two tourists, Emanuel and Mira Riva, a man and wife from Israel, and a handgun to kill two staffers, Alexandre Strens and Dominique Sabrier. He then fled the scene on foot. According to some reports, he wore a video camera.

The man arrested in Marseille, one of the sources told AFP, is believed to have participated in the civil war in Syria in 2013 as a jihadist.

He is held on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, AFP reported.

Belgian police has briefly detained at least two men whom media reported had been interrogated about the shooting and released as part of a massive manhunt launched in Belgium.