A top Belgian nuclear scientist appeared to have been secretly monitored by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group after a surveillance footage of him was found in the possession of a suspect linked to the Nov. 13 Paris bombers.
The existence of the footage that was seized by police on Nov. 30 was confirmed by Thierry Werts, a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecutor after it was reported by the Belgian La Dernière Heure daily newspaper.
The scientist, who has not been identified for security reasons, could be seen coming and going from his house in the Flanders region in the 10-hour fixed camera clip, the paper said, according to IBT.
The device used to record the scientist's movement was picked up from a bush by two men who then drove away in a vehicle with the lights off, CCTV from the area later showed.
The video was retrieved from the wife of Mohamed Bakkali during a series of raids targeting ISIS suspects and supporters in the aftermaths of the Nov. 13 attacks.
Bakkali, 26, is one of 11 suspects in the coordinated series of shootings and bombings that killed 130 people in the French capital.
According to the Belgian news outlet RTBF, the spied scientist worked at a nuclear research site in Mol, which is equipped with a nuclear reactor and a storage facility for radioactive waste.
Investigators believe the terrorists could have been tailing the researcher to gain access to the facility and put their hands on hazardous material to create a "dirty bomb."
Sébastien Berg, a spokesman for Belgium's Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, confirmed that the agency had been informed immediately of the existence of the footage and said that employees had been advised to be vigilant.
He said there were "concrete indications that showed that the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks had the intention to do something involving one of our four nuclear sites," the New York Times reported Thursday. "If they find a way to spread such material among the population, they could do a lot of damage."
The report of the footage comes after Iraq announced it was searching for a "highly dangerous'' device that disappeared from a storage facility near Basra last year.
A U.S. official also disclosed on Thursday that Iraq was missing a camera that contains highly radioactive Iridium-192, which disappeared in November, WND reported.
Members of Belgium's Parliament meanwhile expressed outrage in a regular session Thursday, saying they were misinformed of the threat to the country's nuclear facilities.
Jean-Marc Nollet, a Parliament member from Ecolo, Belgium's green party, said that while the country should not give in to panic, it also cannot deny the magnitude of the risks, if there is.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon, after reviewing the tapes, said there was threat "to the person in question, but not the nuclear facilities,'' NYT said.
