The Belgian authorities have arrested an Iraqi man suspected of involvement in a Qaeda terrorist cell that was partly responsible for a series of bombings nearly 15 years ago that killed at least 376 people in Iraq, the country’s federal prosecutor’s office said on Friday.
The man, identified only by the initials O. Y. T., has been living in Belgium since 2015 and was taken into custody on Wednesday after the Belgian police carried out a search in the eastern city of Hasselt, the prosecutor’s office said.
He was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, several murders with terrorist intent, and participating in the activities of a terrorist group for attacks carried out in 2009 and 2010 in Baghdad using car bombs, including against several government buildings.
In August 2009, truck bombs killed at least 95 people at and around the Foreign and Finance Ministries in Baghdad, near the Green Zone — a once heavily fortified area that was the heart of the American presence in the country — exposing a new vulnerability after Americans had handed over security responsibilities to Iraq about two months earlier.
That October, two synchronized car bombs struck near the same area, killing at least 155 people, injuring about 500, and severely damaging the Justice Ministry and other institutional buildings. In the months afterward, another series of car bombs killed dozens of people in the area.
The prosecutor’s office said the suspect would appear on Friday before a court, which will decide whether to keep him in custody.
