Dutch police have arrested a suspected member of the Shabab extremist group following a tip-off from anti-terror authorities, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
“Police arrested a 22-year-old man last Wednesday on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization,” the public prosecution service said in a statement.
“According to information received from the Dutch intelligence service (AIVD), the man has since last year been an active member of the Shabab terrorist organization in southern Somalia,” the statement said.
The man, whose name was not given, was seized after leaving the home of a friend in the southern Dutch town of Sint-Oedenrode near Eindhoven, prosecutors said.
Local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad reported the suspect was a Dutch-Somali national called “Mohamed” who had also lived in Britain for many years.
He appeared before a Rotterdam court last Wednesday on terror-related charges and is still in police custody.
Police also arrested the suspect’s 21-year-old friend but he was later released.
Police in December arrested a suspected Dutch jihadist in Rotterdam and seized an AK-47 assault rifle, two loaded magazines and four boxes of illegal fireworks.
Dutch law enforcement agencies have been on high alert since the November 2015 bombings in Paris, and last year’s March suicide attacks on the Brussels metro and airport.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Shabab jihadist group was forced out of the Somali capital Mogadishu in 2011 by African Union troops but still controls parts of the country.

Source: Arab News