Terrorist charge in Belgium for stealing important documents

Belgian authorities have arrested a man already convicted for terrorism and charged him with theft of material from prosecutors, including information on autopsies of the victims of the 2016 Brussels bombings. Brussels prosecutors said on Wednesday that they had become aware of the theft last Friday and had then on Saturday detained a man they identified as E.K.I., who they said had previously received a five-year sentence for participating in the activities of a terrorist group. They said the man had attended a probation meeting on Thursday in the same building as the prosecutors.

He is charged with having entered the office of the prosecutors' medical expert and taken the hard disk backing up the expert's computer, along with various other items. The back-up included information on the autopsies of the victims of the Brussels bombings in March 2016, which killed 32 people. They said there were no indications to suggest that it was a targeted theft of specific documents or information. The suspect had denied carrying out the theft, prosecutors said, and the stolen items had not been found.

(With inputs from agencies.)