THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday dropped their case against a man who had been suspected of involvement in supplying automatic weapons to Islamic State extremists who went on a bloody rampage in Paris in 2015.
The Public Prosecution Service said in a statement that a lengthy Dutch probe “has not produced sufficient legal and convincing evidence.” They asked for the suspect’s acquittal and a court in the port city of Rotterdam granted the request.
The suspect’s identity was not released, in line with Dutch privacy guidelines.
A court in Paris convicted 20 men in June for their roles in the attacks on the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and the national stadium that killed 130 people. The only surviving gunman, Salah Abdeslam, was sentenced to life with no chance of parole.
Among those convicted by the French court was a man who had been in contact with the Dutch suspect, the prosecution service in the Netherlands said, but it added that the French judgment showed “that it cannot be determined who supplied the weapons used and who might have been involved.”
The Dutch suspect was released from pretrial detention nearly a year ago. Prosecutors said there were “indications that the man played a mediating role for the delivery of the weapons. But there was never any indication that he knew that these weapons would be used for a terrorist attack.”
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