DUTCH GIG CANCELLED AFTER TERROR TIP-OFF
Rotterdam cops detain Spaniard driving van with gas canisters
ROTTERDAM
DUTCH police were yesterday investigating possible terror links after arresting a Spaniard driving a van containing gas canisters, close to a rock concert that was abruptly cancelled over fears of an attack.
The man “was arrested and taken to the police station”, Rotterdam police said in a tweet late on Wednesday, following a tip-off from Spanish authorities.
Another man was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on a house in the Brabant region.
The arrests came little under a week after twin vehicle attacks in Spain killed 15 people, which were claimed by the Islamic State.
Dutch bomb squad officials “were investigating the van”, which was found just two streets away from the Maassilo concert hall where an American rock band was due to play.
“What I saw was a vehicle with lots of gas cylinders inside and inside the boot,” witness Usama Mohamed said.
Earlier in the evening, Dutch authorities decided to cancel the concert in Europe’s largest port city after a tip-off from Spanish police around 5.30pm about a possible terror attack.
“We received a threat that had implications for an American concert at the Maassilo in Rotterdam,” the city’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, said.
“This signal came from the Spanish police to the Dutch police,” he added.
But Aboutaleb, the country’s first Muslim and immigrant-born mayor who had spoken out against Islamic terror groups, added an investigation was under way and “we cannot say now if the van with the canisters was linked to the threat”.
Rotterdam police said that afterwards an officer “stationed close to the venue decided to stop a van that he saw driving at around 2130hrs”.
“The van had Spanish plates and was driven by a Spanish national. Inside the van were a couple of gas bottles.
“Whether there is a link with the terror threat is being looked into,” the statement in English said.
The international connections of the cell of mostly Moroccan nationals behind the Spanish attacks are being probed, as investigators retrace their movements to France and Belgium.
Spanish police carried out new raids overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, after vehicles ploughed into pedestrians on Barcelona’s busy Las Ramblas boulevard and a seaside promenade in the resort town of Cambrils.
Fifteen people were killed and more than 120 others were wounded.
Spanish court documents have shown that at least 500 litres of acetone, large quantities of nails and detonators as well as gas canisters were found in raids on a house in Alcanar, south of Barcelona.
The Rotterdam building where Wednesday’s concert was to be held, which could hold about 1,000 people, was searched by the Dutch anti-terror squad after the crowd had been evacuated. AFP