Dutch police arrest gunman suspected of shooting Spanish populist Alejo Vidal-Quadras
Police in the Netherlands arrested a 38-year-old Tunisian man in connection with the attempted assassination of Spanish populist politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras. The suspect was captured in Haarlem on June 6, according to the Noord-Holland district of the Public Prosecution Service (OM). His apprehension was first made public on Wednesday.
Spanish newspaper El País identified the suspect as Mehrez Ayari, a French-Tunisian man Spanish police suspect of shooting Vidal-Quadras in Madrid in November. He was allegedly in the planning stages of another politically-motivated murder when he was apprehended in Haarlem, where he was staying under an assumed name.
A Dutch woman was one of five people previously arrested in the case. She was taken into custody on suspicion of financing the assassination attempt, and helping to plan it. Her identity has not yeet been revealed, though she was taken into custody in April. The other individuals were caught in Spain and Colombia.
The shooting of Vidal-Quadras sparked an international manhunt, and the politician himself believes he was targeted because of his ties to political opponents to the Iranian regime. He was out for his routine morning walk when he was shot in the face on November 9.
"I was lucky because I turned my head. Normally they aim for the head or neck. Instead the bullet went into my jaw and out the other side," he told the Independent in an interview published last month. In a fleeting moment when he regained consciousness at an area hospital, he typed the word "Iran" on his phone to pass his suspicions on to the police.
“I could not speak but I wanted them to know who it was so another group of terrorists were not blamed.” In fact, one of those arrested, Narayan Gómez Mala converted to become a Shiite Muslim, the branch of the religion most observed in Iran.
El País reported that the gunman was wearing a motorcycle helmet after the shooting, and the video footage captured by security cameras near the attack showed his escape. The suspect fled on a motorcycle about 19 kilometres southwest of the city, where he tried to destroy his vehicle in a field before arriving at a hotel in Fuenlabrada.
He was identified as he had stayed in the same hotel the previous night. Ayari was seen in videos shot over the course of the previous days as he allegedly surveilled the politician, the newspaper reported based on information from sources.
Ayari has ties to organized crime in the Netherlands, according to El País. He is wanted for the murder-for-hire execution of a drug trafficker in France in August 2022. Another individual, the Moroccan citizen Sami Bekal Bounouare, is still wanted in connection with the attack on Vidal-Quadras.
It is not yet clear if Ayari's link to organized crime include ties to Morocco and Colombia. Like Spain, the countries have played a role in previous Dutch cases involving drug trafficking, homicide, and hired killings.
