Attacker’s laptop had floor plan of Belgian PM’s office
Statement by suicide bomber — called a will by authorities — was also found on computer
BRUSSELS— A file with the floor plan and photographs of the office of the Belgian prime minister was found on a laptop computer discarded in a garbage can last week by one of the terrorists linked to the Brussels attacks, a government official said Wednesday.
The computer was found during a raid on Rue Max Roos in the Schaerbeek section of Brussels several hours after the attacks on March 22.
The toll from the attacks was revised downward Tuesday to 32 from 35 as the authorities finished identifying the victims.
Several Belgian newspapers, including L’Écho, De Tijd and De Morgen, reported Wednesday that the information about the prime minister’s office, in Rue de la Loi, the site of regular meetings by Cabinet ministers, had been found on the laptop.
A Belgian official familiar with the investigation confirmed those reports Wednesday, but spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
On the same computer, investigators found a statement — described by the authorities as a will — by Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of three suicide bombers who carried out the attacks.
In that statement, el-Bakraoui described himself as increasingly desperate and fearful of ending up in prison. El-Bakraoui and another man, Najim Laachraoui, blew themselves up at Brussels Airport, and el-Bakraoui’s younger brother, Khalid, detonated a suicide bomb at the Maelbeek subway station.
Authorities are seeking a third airport attacker, a man seen on surveillance footage wearing a white jacket. They are also, according to Belgian news reports, looking for another person involved in the subway blast.
Belgian news reports said the computer also contained precise information about the prime minister’s residence, which is known as the Lambermont and is steps from the U.S. Embassy.
Secretary of State John Kerry met Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel at the residence Friday.
L’Écho reported that Michel had been kept informed, that security around the office had been reinforced and that the United States had been asked to help analyze and decrypt information on the computer.
On Wednesday, the Dutch minister of security and justice, Ard van der Steur, said that the intelligence divi- sion of the New York Police Department had warned the Dutch government, via the Dutch Embassy in Washington, on March 16 that the el-Bakraoui brothers had links to terrorism.
Van der Steur had said that the warning had come from the FBI, but in a statement Wednesday, he acknowledged that he had erred in testimony before the Dutch Parliament.
It was not clear how the police in New York had become aware of the el-Bakraoui brothers or why they had relayed the information to the Dutch authorities.
News outlets in the Netherlands have reported that the government there passed the warning from the Americans on to the Belgians on March 17, one day after receiving it.
The Turkish government arrested Ibrahim el-Bakraoui near the Turkish border with Syria in June, alerted the Belgian government about him then deported him to the Netherlands, at his request.
Whether the Dutch and Belgian authorities sufficiently appreciated the gravity of the threat posed by el-Bakraoui and his brother is one of many strands that lawmakers and intelligence agencies are reviewing in the aftermath of the attacks.