Terror hunt meets hooligans in Brussels
As extremist suspects busted, right-wing soccer fans clash with riot cops at memorial
BRUSSELS— Belgian riot police clashed Sunday with hundreds of right-wing hooligans at a temporary shrine honouring victims of the Brussels suicide bombings, as investigators launched fresh anti-terror raids, taking four more people into custody.
Police used water cannon when scuffles broke out in front of the Bourse, which has become a symbolic rallying point for people to pay their respects to those who died in Tuesday’s attacks. Black-clad men carrying an anti-Daesh group banner with an expletive on it trampled parts of the shrine, shouting Nazi slogans. Ten were arrested and two police officers injured.
“We had 340 hooligans from different football clubs who came to Brussels and we knew for sure that they would create some trouble,” Police Commissioner Christian De Coninck said. “It was a very difficult police operation because lots of families with kids were here.”
Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur expressed his disgust, with Belgium still in mourning over the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and subway, which killed at least 31 peo- ple and injured some 270.
“The police were not deployed to protect people from these hooligans but a whole other threat,” Mayeur told RTL television.
People trying to pay their respects were also dismayed.
“It was important for us to be here symbolically,” said Samia Orosemane, a 35-year-old comedian. But, she added, “there were lots of men who were here and doing the Nazi salute, shouting ‘death to Arabs’ and so we weren’t able to get through.”
“We are all here today for peace and for the brotherhood among peoples. Not for right-wing ideas. It’s neither the time nor the place,” said Théophile Mouange, 52.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, said Sunday morning’s raids were linked to a “federal case regarding terrorism” but did not specify whether it had any links to the March 22 attacks.
Thirteen raids were launched in the capital and the northern cities of Mechelen and Duffel. An investigating judge was to decide later whether to keep the four in custody. Five were released after questioning.
Suspected plotters also were arrested Sunday in Italy and the Nether- lands, though few details of their activity were released immediately.
Tuesday’s bomb attacks are also tearing at the fabric of the government, justice system and police, while Belgium’s interior minister sought Sunday to contain the growing criticism of the government’s handling of the tragedy.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon conceded Sunday that decades of neglect had hampered the government’s response to violent extremism. He also said that Belgium’s justice system and security services are still lagging behind despite recent investment.
Jambon, whose offer to resign Thursday was declined by the prime minister, also acknowledged some shortcomings prior to the attacks. “There have been errors,” he said on VRT television.
Jambon and Justice Minister Keen Goens were grilled by lawmakers Friday over how authorities failed to arrest suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui before he blew himself up at Brussels Airport.
Turkey has said that Bakraoui — whose brother Khalid was the suicide bomber at the Maelbeek subway station on Tuesday — was caught near Turkey’s border with Syria in 2015 and Ankara had warned Brussels and the Netherlands that he was “a foreign terrorist fighter.” With files from David Keyton and Frances D’Emilio.