Belgians look back at clues
Premier rejects aides’ offers to quit in attack aftermath
BRUSSELS — Belgium’s prime minister refused to accept the resignations of his justice and interior ministers Thursday after they offered to quit over questions about why authorities couldn’t prevent the deadly Islamic extremist attacks in Brussels despite signs of the threat.
With at least one attacker at large and an unknown number of accomplices, police detained six people in raids around the Belgian capital Thursday night.
Belgian prosecutors said the raids targeted central Brussels, Jette and the Schaerbeek neighborhood, where police earlier had found a stash of explosives and bomb-making materials in an apartment used by the Brussels attackers.
Among the questions since Tuesday’s bombings were those raised by Turkey’s announcement that it had warned Belgium last year that one of the Brussels attackers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, had been flagged as a “foreign terrorist fighter.”
“If you put all things in a row, you can ask yourself major questions” about the government’s performance, said Interior Minister Jan Jambon, who along with Justice Minister Koen Geens had tendered his resignation.
But Prime Minister Charles Michel asked Jambon and Geens to stay on, given the challenge the government has faced since Tuesday’s bombings in the Brussels airport and a subway station. The attacks killed 31 people and wounded 270.
Turkey said Wednesday that El Bakraoui was apprehended in June near Turkey’s border with Syria and was deported to The Netherlands. He was later set free by the Dutch for lack of proof of his involvement with jihadis.
Geens appeared on a Belgian TV news show and was asked who was to blame for
the failure to follow up on the Turkish warning.
“It is clear it is not one single person, but it is true that we could have expected from Ankara or Istanbul a more diligent communication, we think, that perhaps could have avoided certain things.”
“Our own services should perhaps have been more critical about the place where the person had been detained,” he added, referring to Turkey’s border area with Syria.
“When someone is arrested there in a city few people know, it is clear enough for insiders that it could be a terrorist,” Geens said. “Here, though, he was not known as a terrorist. It is the only moment we could have linked him to it. And that moment, perhaps, we missed.”
The justice minister acknowledged that “we have to be very self-critical.”
But Geens added that “such events have also happened in nations with the best intelligence services in the world,” pointing to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
FRAGMENTED INTELLIGENCE
The intelligence shortcomings have prompted European authorities to once again call for quicker and more efficient intelligence cooperation.
Less than a mile from the bombed subway station, European justice and home ministers held an emergency meeting Thursday where they condemned the “terrorist acts” as “an attack on our open, democratic society.” They also urged the European Parliament to adopt an agreement allowing authorities to exchange airport passenger data.
Rob Wainwright, the head of Europe’s police agency, Europol, said his agency is trying to make sure investigators have access to needed information.
“You have a fragmented intelligence picture, but we’re trying to help with that,” he said. “Our databases contain thousands of names of suspected foreign fighters, which have been submitted by member states, and even the United States. But we also have records on arms smuggling, money laundering, forgery and other elements which are particularly relevant given that many of these guys had petty crime backgrounds.”
He said the threat goes beyond France and Belgium and that it is impossible to reduce it to zero.
“We are looking at large numbers of foreign fighters who have returned as potential terrorists,” he said. “And we are faced with a strategic decision by the Islamic State to aggressively target Europe. These are all very challenging dimensions. As for how large the community is and who has been sent back — that is the golden question.”
Separately, Wainwright warned that the threat of Islamic State attacks is greater than previous assessments have said.
The terrorist group has adopted a “more aggressive” posture toward Europe, he told the BBC and said security authorities were focused on about 5,000 suspects who had become radicalized in Europe and traveled to Syria to fight. Many have now returned.
“We are faced by a more dangerous, a more urgent security threat from so-called Islamic State,” he said. “It threatens not just France and Belgium but a number of European countries at the same time. … It is certainly the most serious threat we have faced in at least a decade.”
Top European Union officials this week were using the public alarm over the Belgian attacks to call for stronger coordination among European countries.
“Right now we are at the peak of two crises: security and migration,” Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, said Wednesday.
“While they overlap in timing, they should not be confused. Those people who have arrived on our shores are precisely fleeing the same terror that has struck us, right here in the heart of Europe. To antagonize those seeking protection would be giving in to the hatred and division that terrorists seek to sow.”
Avramopoulos emphasized that the so-called Schengen Agreement, which abolished internal borders to allow free travel among member nations, “is not the problem.”
“But let me also say that we cannot have a secure area of internal free movement without better control of our external borders,” he said.
TERROR ALERT LOWER
Authorities, meanwhile, lowered Belgium’s terror-threat level by one notch, although they said the situation remained grave and another attack is “likely and possible.”
Belgium had been on its highest alert since Tuesday’s bombings.
“The danger has not gone away,” said Paul Van Tigchelt, the head of the terror assessment authority.
Several hundred people gathered at a makeshift memorial to the victims in Brussels’ central Place de la Bourse. They sang peace songs, took selfies and wiped away tears.
Ashraf, a Moroccan-born Muslim who is proud to call himself a Brussels resident, arrived to light a candle and take photos of the memorial site with his mother, father, aunt and brother.
“It always happens, that people ask Muslims ‘why do you do this?’ But that is not real Islam,” he said. “We must have more understanding of this.”
Because of the climate of sus- picion and because he wanted to protect his family, Ashraf didn’t want his last name published.
Yet he went to the Place de la Bourse to celebrate his multicultural city.
“This is a special country, it is open. I know people of many dozens of nationalities,” he said. Behind him, flags or symbols from a dozen countries adorned the square.
SURVEILLANCE IMAGES
A manhunt continued for one of the airport attackers, who was seen on a surveillance video and had fled the scene.
Prosecutors declined to comment on reports from Belgian state broadcaster RTBF and France’s Le Monde and BFM television that a fifth attacker may be at large: A man seen on surveillance cameras in the Brussels subway station carrying a large bag alongside one of the suicide bombers. It is not clear whether that man was killed in the attack or is a fugitive.
Authorities drew a line between the Brussels bombings and the Nov. 13 attacks that left 130 dead in Paris. Both appeared to have been carried out by the same Belgium-based Islamic State cell.
Prosecutors have said at least four people were involved in the Brussels bloodshed, including brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui — identified as suicide bombers. European security officials identified another suicide bomber as Najim Laachraoui, a suspected bomb-maker for the Paris attacks.
Khalid El Bakraoui blew himself up on the subway train, while Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Laachraoui died in the airport blasts.
The federal prosecutors’ office said Khalid El Bakraoui had rented a house used as a hideout for the Paris attackers and that he had been hunted by police since December.
Authorities are working to tie the bombings in Brussels to Salah Abdeslam, 26, who is the top suspect in November’s attacks
in Paris and was arrested last week.
On Thursday, Abdeslam was summoned to court in Brussels. His lawyer, who had initially vowed to fight Abdeslam’s extradition to France, said Abdeslam now wants to be sent there as soon as possible.
Abdeslam evaded police in two countries for four months before his capture, and the attackers in Brussels may have rushed their assaults because authorities were closing in on them.
Abdeslam’s lawyer, Sven Mary, told reporters that he asked for a one-month delay on any transfer while he studies the large dossier but that Abdeslam “wants to explain himself in France, so it’s a good thing.”
Separately, France’s interior minister said a Frenchman in the “advanced stages” of a plot to attack the country was arrested Thursday northwest of Paris and security forces locked down the area during a major search.
Bernard Cazeneuve said there were no links “at this stage” between the plot and the attacks against Brussels this week or Paris in November.
Cazeneuve said bomb squads were at the site. The raid took place in Argenteuil, on the northern outskirts of the French capital. He noted that the person arrested was implicated at a “high level” in the plot, but offered no details.