One of three men arrested in Turkey who are accused of supporting ISIS served as a lookout during the attacks in Paris last week that left 130 dead, according to Turkish authorities.
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The Belgian, identified as Ahmet Dahmani was seized at a hotel while suspects Ahmet Tahir, 29, and Muhammed Verd, 23, were arrested in a auto on the D-400 highway that crosses southern Turkey.
The level four threat was declared following a meeting of top ministers, police and security services.
That is one of several connections between the Paris attacks and Belgium, a country seen as fertile ground for jihadist recruiters.
“Had the Belgian authorities alerted us in due time, Dahmani could have been apprehended at the airport”, said the official. Because the assaults in Paris last Friday., raids have followed in Brussels, where one asserted attacker, Salah Abdeslam, has-been hiding out, in accordance to buddies who spoke with him.
The suspect was being questioned at the prosecutor’s office on Saturday.
Since then, three people have been detained in Brussels and face terrorism charges. Bilal was the suicide bomber who blew himself up during the paris attack in the capital.
On Wednesday, the mastermind of the Paris attacks, believed to have been holed up in an apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Saint Denis, was killed and two others were detained.
The agency says he was detained in a police raid at his hotel. One of the men allegedly served as a lookout during the attacks outside the Stade de France, Turkish police said.
Authorities had been using the state of emergency declared by President Francois Hollande to carry out a widespread clampdown on potential terrorist threats, detaining dozens of people, putting more than 100 others under house arrest and seizing an alarming array of weapons.
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On Friday night the 15 members of the security council adopted a French-drafted resolution calling on United Nations members to take “all necessary measures” in fighting Islamic State.
