Belgium focuses on manhunt in deflecting criticism
BRUSSELS — Belgium’s justice minister pleaded Tuesday for critics of Belgium’s intelligence failures to focus on the hunt for those behind last week’s Brussels attacks and November’s massacre in Paris.
Investigators say they are looking for at least one suspect in the attacks seven days ago, when suicide bombers killed 32 people at Brussels Airport and in a subway station near the European Union headquarters. Three suicide bombers also blew themselves up.
The Health Ministry and victims identification officials said 90 people remain hospitalized. In a joint news conference they said the 32 dead included 17 Belgians and 15 foreigners, while 44 of thewounded are foreigners from20 nations.
Belgium has faced rising international criticism over its inability to identify and monitor Islamic State activists living in the Belgian capital who have been deemed responsible both for the March 22 bombings in Brussels and the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead. Several of those who killed themselves during the attacks or were subsequently arrested were Belgian nationals of North African background.
“Now is not the time to fight one another. As far as I know, the enemy is in Syria,” Justice Minister Koen Geens said, referring to the primary power base of the Islamic State extremist group that claimed responsibility for the attacks.
But authorities in Belgium and in neighboring Netherlands faced fresh questions Tuesday about how much they knew in advance of the March 22 bombings.
Turkey revealed it deported one of the suicide bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, to the Netherlands in mid-2015 after catching him near the Syrian border and identifying him to Dutch authorities as a suspected militant.
Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said Tuesday that his country’s security services received a note fromthe FBI on March 16 detailing what he called the “radical and terrorist background” of the El Bakraoui brothers. One, Ibrahim, blew himself up alongside an accomplice at the airport, while the other brother, Khalid, detonated a bomb inside a train leaving Maelbeek subway station.
The timing of the note and why it was sent to the Dutch remained unclear. Belgian authorities said Tuesday they were not informed of its existence and had no idea where the El Bakraoui brothers were before the Brussels bombings.
On Tuesday, a parliamentary committee approved anti-terror proposals to give police round-the-clock powers for house searches, to improve the Belgian database on extremists and to increase phone-tapping powers. Parliament has yet to consider these measures.
Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur, who faces criticism for his own actions before and after the suicide bombings, said Belgian authorities must learn painful lessons and improve their ability to combat Islamic militancy. “Were there mistakes? Did we miss anything? Certainly. Otherwise these attacks would not have happened,” Mayeur said.
Brussels, he suggested, would never feel the same. “There’s no such thing as ‘normal’ anymore,” he said during a visit to Paris.