Imam dead in arson attack on Belgium mosque

A man was killed and another injured in an arson attack on a mosque in Brussels, the Belgian capital.“A suspect was taken into custody at the scene,” police spokeswoman Marie Verbeke told the AFP news agency on Monday. She said the victim apparently died of smoke inhalation. “The mosque was apparently almost entirely burned down.”Public broadcaster RTBF and a stream of social media users said the victim was a 47-year-old preacher [imam] and that a group of at least 50 people had gathered outside the Shia mosque.Police confirmed this information and said they received a call at 6:45 pm (1745 GMT) and the body was pulled out 45 minutes later.A witness saw the suspect, a man, set fire to the building, Verbeke said, but no other details were immediately available about him either.Anderlecht Mayor Vincent Van Goidsenhoven said the suspect threw a Molotov cocktail at the mosque, Belga news agency reported.The area around the mosque, near Belgium’s main international railway hub, has a large immigrant Muslim population.The last time a Muslim preacher was targeted in Brussels was in 1989 when Saudi-born Abdullah Muhammad al-Ahdal was shot dead a man inside the city’s main mosque.His killing was claimed by a small pro-Iranian group in Lebanon who accussed him of being too moderate and of having rejected the “death sentence” slapped on writer Salman Rushdie.