Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, detained after random drug check;
 French citizen believed to have links with jihadists in Syria.

PARIS – Police announced on Sunday that they had arrested Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-yearold French citizen, for the May 24 shooting at Brussels’s Jewish Museum that resulted in four deaths, including two Israelis.

Nemmouche, who served time in prison in 2009 and 2012, was detained on Friday in Marseille. According to a police source he had in his possession a Kalashnikov assault rifle, another weapon and video recordings of the crime.

The French radio network RTL reported that investigators had found a memory stick with footage showing Nemmouche carrying a weapon. Local media said he also had press clippings of the shooting.

According to these reports, the arrest resulted from a random drug-related check at Marseille’s bus terminal.

French President François Hollande confirmed that a suspect had been arrested and repeated his country’s determination to do all it could to stop radicalized youths from carrying out attacks.

French media reports said Nemmouche was also suspected of having stayed with jihadist groups last year while in Syria, where Islamist insurgents have been playing a major part in the three-year uprising against President Bashar Assad.
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