A Frenchman who was arrested last week and linked to the ringleader of last year’s Paris attacks has been charged with a series of terrorism offenses, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday.
The Associated Press reported that Reda Kriket has been charged with participating in a terrorist group with plans for at minimum one attack, possessing and transporting arms and explosives, and possessing fake documents, along with other charges. Kriket was allegedly involved in plotting an imminent attack and also oversaw an explosives arsenal, Molins said.
Following Kriket’s arrest last week, court documents showed that Belgian authorities had linked him to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the supposed ringleader of the November Paris attacks who died in a police raid last year, CNN reported. Kriket and Abaaoud were sentenced in absentia by a Belgian court in July for being part of a jihadist network.
Molins did not say Wednesday whether the plot in which Kriket allegedly participated was connected to the ISIS network responsible for the terror attacks in Paris and the more recent ones in Brussels. The coordinated attacks in Brussels last Tuesday killed at least 35 people, and those in Paris killed 130 people in November.
Authorities believe that Kriket traveled to Syria in 2014 and 2015 and made multiple trips between France and Belgium. Three others have also been arrested in Belgium and the Netherlands in connection with Kriket’s case.