Dutch arrest after Rotterdam gig cancelled amid threat

International Desk: Police have arrested a 22-year-old man in the southern Dutch province of Brabant, hours after a rock concert was cancelled because of an alert from Spanish police.

The man was detained in the early hours of Thursday as part of the inquiry into the terror threat, said police.

The alarm on Wednesday centred on a gig involving US band the Allah-Las, due to perform in Rotterdam's Maassilo.

A Spanish van driver was detained close by but police said he was not involved.

The reported tip-off from Spanish police came less than a week after the jihadist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in which 15 people died.

Police wearing bulletproof vests were sent to the venue, which was evacuated.

A van with a Spanish number plate was stopped while driving erratically in a nearby street and a bomb squad was sent to examine the vehicle. Gas canisters were found inside and the driver was detained, but within hours Dutch authorities were playing down any potential link.

The man was later described by police as drunk. The Spanish driver was said to be a mechanic who had the gas canisters in his vehicle as part of his job.

"He didn't have anything to do with the threat to the venue," Rotterdam police spokesman Gijs van Nimwegen told the BBC.

Hours later, at 02:00 (00:00 GMT), a special police unit raided a house in Brabant. In a statement (in Dutch), police said a man had been arrested and his home searched. No details were given of where in Brabant the raid took place or who the suspect was.
The Dutch DSI counter-terrorism unit is involved in the investigation and a police spokesman told local TV in Brabant that the inquiry was "in full swing". The Netherlands' National Co-ordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Dick Schoof, said the Brabant arrest had no link to the Spanish driver.

Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/Aug 24, 2017/Nasim