French national Reda Kriket, 34, was arrested on Thursday in Argenteuil, a northwestern suburb of Paris, and police uncovered several assault rifles including Kalashnikovs and TATP – the easy-to-make explosive of choice of the Islamic State group.
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Cazenueve said there had been 75 arrests since the beginning of the year, and 28 suspects had been jailed.
A Belgian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said Kriket was convicted in absentia in July along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud and others for being part of a recruiting network for jihad in Syria. Bomb squads are on site, Cazeneuve said.
A search of his house and workplace along with scrutiny of his mobile phone failed to produce any evidence tying him to the attacks in Belgium that killed 31 and injured 340, police told the DPA news agency.
Authorities arrest a French national suspected of planning an attack, according to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Meanwhile, a terrorist attack in France was foiled as the suspected perpetrator was arrested near Paris on Thursday.
In November, 130 people were killed in Paris in coordinated attacks on cafes, a sports stadium and a concert hall.
Police say they had been monitoring the suspect for some time.
In dramatic scenes, one of the suspects was shot in the leg at a tram stop in broad daylight in a huge operation by police in the Belgian capital’s Schaerbeek district, where police this week found a bomb factory linked to the Brussels attacks.
The raid in Schaerbeek is one of a number of operations said to have taken place across Europe in connection with the Brussels bombings.
Police in Belgium and Paris are still piecing together the potential links between the November attacks and those in Brussels this week.
The Netherlands’ foreign minister says three Dutch citizens were killed in the bombing at Brussels airport.
Ibrahim and his brother Khalid, the suicide bomber in the metro attack, were also on a United States counter-terrorism watch list, CNN reported.
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The nation’s federal prosecutor revealed Abdeslam “has invoked his right to silence” and has not spoken to investigators since a few brief interviews the day after his arrest.
