All four men detained on suspicion of involvement in the devastating explosions in The Hague are from Brabant. De Volkskrant wrote this on Tuesday. It was already known that two of them came from Roosendaal and one from Oosterhout. Now it appears that the Rotterdam resident (33) who has been detained also has Brabant roots.
This 33-year-old Moshtag B. was arrested last Monday evening in his home in Rotterdam. He was born in Afghanistan and grew up according to the newspaper in Roosendaal. Four weeks before the explosion, B. is said to have tried to sell the white Range Rover that was found burned out at the complex in The Hague.
B. recently trained as an optician and he also has a company in Roosendaal, where two other suspects in the explosion also come from.
Van with lights on and engine running
There are strong indications that the two men from Roosendaal, who were arrested for possible involvement in the deadly explosion in The Hague, were already preparing for that attack a week earlier. Most likely, the pair, who are currently in custody, were already arrested in Oosterhout on December 1.
READ ALSO: Local residents saw men arrested in a van with jerry cans
They were in a van in a parking lot in the middle of the night with fourteen jerry cans with an unknown content, heavy fireworks, torches, a fire extinguisher and extra clothing. The police discovered the van around a quarter past two in the morning on Sunday in the parking lot of a shopping center on Zuiderhout in Oosterhout. Officers saw the vehicle with its lights on and the engine running. That was just under a week before the actual explosions in The Hague.
The two occupants were arrested for preparing a crime. They were detained for some time and interrogated. It is not clear when the pair were released again. The van and the goods have been seized. The police in both The Hague and West Brabant do not want to comment on a possible connection between the two cases. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) has not yet responded.