http://www.politico.eu

3/24/16

 

Belgium knew of Brussels bomber’s terror links

By Carmen Paun and Laurens Cerulus

 

Brussels metro bomber was suspected of renting a hideout for the Paris attackers.

 

Belgium knew last year of suspected links between one of the Brussels suicide bombers and November’s Paris attacks, prosecutors said Thursday, while two cabinet ministers acknowledged mistakes in the handling of the terror network.

One of two brothers who took part in Tuesday’s attacks on Zaventem airport and a subway train, which killed 31 people and injured hundreds more, had already been suspected of helping the Paris attackers, the federal prosecutors’ office said. That appeared to contradict their earlier statements that the brothers had criminal records but no known links to terrorism.

Brahim el-Bakraoui and another suicide bomber blew themselves up at the airport just before 8 a.m. Tuesday, killing 11 people. A third suspect led the scene after dumping a bag full of explosives. An hour later, Khalid el-Bakraoui blew himself up on a train at Maalbeek station in central Brussels near EU headquarters. There was no official confirmation of Belgian media reports that a fifth attacker took part in the metro bombing. So far, the brothers are the only attackers to be officially identified.

The attacks came just four days after Belgian police caught one of the main surviving suspects for the Paris attacks, in which 130 people died. Salah Abdeslam spent four months on the run before being caught close to his family home in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, which is notorious for Islamic radicalism.

Abdeslam has been linked to the Brussels attacks by fingerprints found at an ISIL safe house in the Brussels neighborhood of Forest, where police also found detonators. Now one of the Brussels attackers has been linked to the Paris attacks, suggesting an even greater degree of complicity among the young Muslim men who carried out both attacks in the name of ISIL.

The federal prosecutors’ office issued a statement Thursday saying international and European arrest warrants had been issued for metro bomber Khalid el-Bakraoui last December by the judge in charge of Belgium’s investigations into the Paris attacks.

“The subject was suspected of having rented, with the aid of a fake Belgian identity card in the name of Ibrahim Maaroufi, a room in Rue Fort in Charleroi which was used as a hideout for the terrorist group implicated in the Paris attacks,” said the statement. The arrest warrant for el-Bakraoui was issued on December 11 last year, it added.

One day earlier, Federal Prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw identified the brothers and said: “The two dead terrorists had criminal records not related to terrorism.”

Adding to the picture of confusion over Belgium’s handling of the terror group behind the attacks, two cabinet ministers offered their resignations Wednesday, acknowledging mistakes linked to accusations that Belgium ignored a warning from Turkey last year that Brahim el-Bakraoui had been detained in Turkey and deported as a “terrorist freedom fighter.”

Interior Minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens, who share responsibility for security, the police and the courts,  have spearheaded Belgium’s much-criticized response to the Paris attacks and now the Brussels bombings. However, Prime Minister Charles Michel asked them to stay on in their posts.

Jambon, confirming to Le Soir that he and his colleague had tendered their resignations, said: “There are two sorts of errors: At the level of justice and the level of the liaison officer in Turkey, which impacts the departments of interior and justice.”

He was referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an remarks Wednesday that one of the bombers was arrested near the Syrian border in June last year and deported. “Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism,” Erdo?an said. Turkish state news agency Anadolu said it was Brahim el-Bakraoui.

Erdo?an’s remarks could further undermine the credibility of Belgium’s security services, who have faced sharp criticism for allowing Islamist radicalism to fester under the noses of Belgian authorities in central districts like Molenbeek.  Belgium produces proportionally more jihadists who go off to fight in Syria and Iraq than any other European nation.

Belgian investigators had hoped to get valuable information on the radical network from Salah Abdeslam, who now wishes to be sent to Paris to “explain himself” to the courts there. The 26-year-old Belgian-born French national wishes “to leave for France as soon as possible,” according to his lawyer Sven Mary, who had previously said Abdeslam would refuse transfer to France.

It is unclear how much, if anything, Abdeslam knows about the Brussels bomb plot. Asked by reporters what his client had said about this week’s attacks, Mary answered: “He didn’t say because he didn’t know it.”

Belgium remains at the highest security alert level. The head of the government’s threat analysis center OCAM, Paul Van Tigchelt, told reporters on Wednesday that “there are a number of people related to yesterday’s attacks still at large in our country, who still pose a danger to our country.”