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France to Extradite Brussels Shooting Suspect

Mehdi Nemmouche faces murder charges for Jewish Museum shooting

by
Stephanie Butnick
June 26, 2014
Flowers are pictured at a makeshift memorial at the entrance of the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where a deadly shooting took place May 24, 2014. (GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)
Flowers are pictured at a makeshift memorial at the entrance of the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where a deadly shooting took place May 24, 2014. (GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)

Mehdi Nemmouche, the 29-year-old suspected of carrying out the May 24 shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum in which four people were killed, will be extradited from France to Belgium to face trial, JTA reports. Nemmouche, a French citizen who was arrested in Marseilles the week after the attack, faces murder charges.

Video footage released by Brussels police after the attack show the shooter entering the museum and opening fire with an AK-47 before quickly leaving. Nemmouche was detained during a routine customs search at the Marseilles bus station on June 2 after authorities discovered “Kalashnikov rifle, another gun and ammunition similar to those used in the shooting.” He has since been held by French authorities on suspicion of murder, attempted murder, and possession of weapons “in the context of terrorist activity.”

The victims of the shooting were an Israeli couple visiting Brussels and a French volunteer at the museum. The fourth victim, who died from his injuries on June 6, was a 23-year-old museum employee.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.