UPDATES: What we know about Brussels explosions

[Anthea]

BBC News

Brussels attacks: Scores remain critical after bombings

Scores of people remain in intensive care following suicide Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels that left 31 people dead, Belgium's health minister says.

Maggie de Block said that of about 300 wounded people, 61 were still in a critical condition, and suggested that the death toll could rise further.

Earlier, prosecutors confirmed they had identified two of the four attackers as brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui.

Two other attackers have yet to be named. One died, another is on the run.

Brahim el-Bakraoui blew himself up in the attack at Zaventem airport that killed 11 people while Khalid struck at Maelbeek metro, where 20 people died, prosecutors said.

Unconfirmed reports say another of the attackers was the wanted jihadist Najim Laachraoui, who is thought to have links with last year's attacks in Paris.

So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind the attacks.

EU interior and justice ministers are due to hold a crisis meeting in Brussels on Thursday to discuss their response to the bombings.

Ms de Block said in a statement (in French) that the injured were from 40 nationalities, and 150 were still being treated in hospitals across Belgium.

Many are suffering from burns or wounds normally seen on a battlefield, such as shrapnel injuries. The death toll, the statement said, was still "provisional".

Ms de Block added that four patients were in a coma and had not yet been identified, which was delaying the process of naming victims.

Belgium's king and queen visited the airport on Wednesday and also met some of those injured in the attacks. A minute's silence was held at midday.

Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said Brahim el-Bakraoui had been identified as the middle of three suspects caught in a CCTV image at the airport.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35888271

[Anthea]

One of the biggest holidays across Europe is about to take place

The Easter Holiday

Many MILLIONS of people will be travelling throughout Europe and beyond

How safe will Easter Travel be?

Surely there is not enough time to install the extra security required in light of the Brussels airport bombs

Gatwick Airport alone expects more than 2 million passengers between March 25 and April 10.

[Anthea]

Telegraph

Pot-bellied recruiter who ordered bombings unmasked

Belgian ministers offer their resignations over security failures

Frustration with Belgians had been mounting for months

Ruth Sherlock in Washington has this report:

Frustration had been mounting for several months in US over Brussels' handling of its worsening Islamic militant threat, American intelligence officials have revealed.

Chief among their criticisms is an apparent reticence by Belgian intelligence agencies to share information with and work with foreign countries, including close allies.

In one case, US officials told Reuters, a top US counter-terrorism official traveling in Europe wanted to visit Brussels to learn more about the investigations following the November Paris attacks. The Belgians reportedly indicated that it was a bad time to speak to foreign officials as they were too busy with the investigation.

Another US government source said that when American investigators try to contact Belgian agencies for information, they often struggle to find which agency or part of an agency might have relevant information.

Belgian security agencies are working to respond to the fact that Belgium has supplied the highest number of foreign fighters to Syria of any European nation.

"Add to that the problem of two languages (French and Flemish), lack of Arabic speakers, and weak coordination between national and local government, you have a huge discrepancy between threat and response," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and White House advisor, now at the Brookings Institution.

Revealed: The pot-bellied jihadi recruiter behind the Brussels and Paris terror attacks

Henry Samuel in Brussels reports:

The Brussels and Paris terror attacks hinged on a pot-bellied, bearded jihadi guru who goes by the nickname of Papa Noel, or Father Christmas, it emerged on Thursday.

Prosecutors say Khalid Zerkani, 42, dubbed "Belgium's biggest ever jihadi recruiter", had links with Najim Laachraoui, whose DNA on Wednesday betrayed him as the second suicide bomber of the Brussels airport attack - pictured pushing a trolley with one black glove on shortly before the devastating blasts.

Police suspect Laahchraoui of being the bomb maker in both Brussels and Paris. Belgian authorities say Laachraoui travelled to Syria in 2013 to train and recruit other foreign fighters before slipping back into Europe among a wave of migrants last autumn.

Moroccan-born Zerkani is also accredited with recruiting two of the Paris killers - Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the atrocities who was killed in a shootout in Saint Denis, outside Paris, shortly afterwards - and Chakib Akrouh, one of the terrace assailants.

During his trial last year for recruiting jihadists, the court heard that Zerkani earned his "Papa Noel" nickname due to his habit of doling out cash and presents to the wayward youths he recruited as thieves and prospective fighters.

He would send them out, Fagin-style, to target train stations and tourists, stealing luggage, even shoplifting for their cause. The profits, officials say, went to help cover the costs of sending recruits from Europe to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

But Mohamed Karim Haddad, whose brother was recruited to fight in Syria, told officials that Zerkani was “a charlatan who manipulates young men or socially awkward men, for the wrong cause and probably for his own business.”

Belgian authorities arrested Zerkani in February 2014 and charged him with being a leader of a terrorist operation. He was convicted last July along with 29 others and sentenced to 12 years - a term the prosecution called for to be increased to 15 years in his appeals trial in February. A verdict is due in the coming weeks.

Laachraoui, who died aged 24, reportedly came under Zerkani's influence while growing up in the northeastern Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek, which the world discovered this week as a hotbed of violent Islamism, along with nearby Molenbeek.

He and his friends reportedly hung out in Schaerbeek's Eugène Verboekhoven square known by residents as "the bear cage", as well as the nearby place du Pavillon - both notorious for petty drug dealing.

A judicial source told DH.be, the Belgian news website: "Before there was no direct link with the Schaerbeek network and the Paris attacks. And now a link has been made with both Paris and Brussels."

Belgium ministers offer resignation over security failures

Belgium's interior and justice ministers have admitted that they failed to heed Turkey's warnings over the Brussels bombers and have offered their resignations.

The Turkish authorities faced major embarassment after it emerged that Ankara had expelled Ibrahim El Bakraoui back to Europe and had warned he was a "foreign fighters."

Charles Michel, the Belgian Prime Minister, did not accept their resignations.

"In a time of war you cannot offer to leave the field," the Prime Minister is said to have responded.

Reports of police raid at Chaussee D'Ixelles

A man has been arrested and his car seized at Chaussee D'Ixelles, according to Belgian news website L'avenir.net.

It said the man was detained at 10am while his vehicle, a BMV series five, was taken in by police, citing eyewitnesses.

A large police presence is on the scene.

Matthew Holehouse in Brussels writes:

Chaussee D'Ixelles is a major shopping street, that leads down to one of the more hipster part of town. It comes out at a major junction overlooked by The Hotel, where President Obama stayed on his visit to Brussels. It's just 200 yards from the Palais de Justice and the Federal Prosecutor's office.

[Anthea]

Guardian

Brussels police believe five bombers may have been involved in attacks

Belgian police are hunting a third man filmed with two suicide bombers at Brussels airport and believe another suspect may have been involved in the blast at a metro station, as evidence mounted that all were part of the same Islamic State network responsible for last November’s carnage in Paris.

European Union justice and interior ministers were meeting in an emergency session on Thursday as pressure intensified on the bloc to improve cooperation against terror attacks in the wake of the bombings in the Belgian capital, which killed at least 31 people and injured 270 more from nearly 40 countries.

Turkey has accused Belgium of ignoring warnings about Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, who was deported from Turkey last year as a suspected foreign fighter in Syria and has now been identified as one of the two suicide bombers who blew themselves and 11 other people up at the airport shortly before 8am on Tuesday.

Just over an hour later, Ibrahim’s brother Khalid detonated a bomb that killed at least 20 more people at Maelbeek metro station. French and Belgian media have said a man carrying a large bag was seen on CCTV in Khalid’s company just before the explosion and could have been a potential fifth attacker.
Live Belgian ministers 'offered to resign' over Brussels attacks – live
Lawyer says Abdeslam seeks extradition to France as ‘second suspect’ sought in metro bombing
Read more

It is not clear whether the man, pictured in a computer-generated image with hollow cheeks and a small goatee beard, was killed in the blast or escaped.

Police sources have told Belgian media they believe the second dead suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, 24, a veteran Belgian Islamic State fighter and bombmaker whose DNA was found on two of the explosive belts that were used in the Paris attacks.

The third suspect captured on airport security cameras, wearing a cream jacket and pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, is now the subject of a manhunt target of police searches. The Belgian federal prosecutor, Frédéric van Leeuw, has said the man fled the airport leaving behind a third suitcase bomb.

All the Brussels attackers so far identified by police and prosecutors have links to Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect in the string of suicide bombings and shootings that killed 130 people in Paris last November.

Laachraoui travelled to Hungary with Abdeslam last year, while the Bakraoui brothers rented safe houses in Belgium and France used by the Paris attackers and by Abdeslam himself after the attacks.

Abdeslam, 26, who was captured in the Belgian capital last week, appeared briefly in court on Thursday and was remanded in custody until 7 April. His lawyer, Sven Mary, said Abdeslam did not know anything about the Brussels attacks. He no longer opposes extradition to France, Mary said, but “wishes to leave ... as quickly as possible” in order “to explain himself”.

Belgian officials resisted Turkish criticism of their inaction following Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s deportation last July, pointing out that suspected militants expelled from Turkey cannot be detained without evidence they have committed a crime.

The justice minister, Koen Geens, denied the 30-year-old Belgian citizen had been flagged as a possible terrorist. “At that time, he was not known here for terrorism,” Geens said. “He was a common law criminal out on parole.”

But the case of Ibrahim el-Bakraoui – who like his brother had a long criminal record – underlines the scale of the problem facing the country’s security and intelligence services: some 300 Belgian nationals have fought in Syria, making Belgium the top European exporter of jihadi fighters relative to its population.

As criticism mounted of Belgium’s apparent inability to smash domestic extremist networks, the country’s foreign minister, Didier Reynders, insisted security always had to be balanced with civil rights.

The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, also came to Belgium’s defence, telling the Flemish-language daily De Standaard: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There was terrorism in Britain and in Germany in the 1970s and 1980. There was terrorism in Spain, in Italy and much more recently in France. People should stop lecturing Belgium.”

The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said events in the headquarters city of the EU and Nato showed more needed to be done to help American efforts to combat Islamic State in the Middle East.

“The Brussels event is going to further signify to Europeans that, as we have been accelerating our campaign to defeat Isil [Isis] in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere, they need to accelerate their efforts and join us,” Carter told CNN.

Brussels airport is likely to remain closed until Saturday, with passengers diverted to Antwerp, Liege and Lille in France. Another minute’s silence was held across the country on Thursday, the second of three days of national mourning.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/m ... accomplice

[Anthea]

Guardian

The scariest thing about Brussels is our reaction to it
by Simon Jenkins

Think like the enemy. Let’s suppose I am an Islamic State terrorist. I don’t do bombs or bullets. I leave the dirty work to the crazies in the basement. My job is what happens next. It is to turn carnage into consequences, body parts into politics. I am a consultant terrorist. I wear a suit, not explosives. A blood-stained concourse is a means to an end. The end is power.

This week I had another success. I converted a squalid psychopathological act into a warrior-evoking, population-terrifying, policy-changing event. I sent a continent into shock. Famous politicians dropped everything to shower me with cliches. Crowned heads deluged me with glorious odium.

I measure my success in column inches and television hours, in ballooning security budgets, butchered liberties, amended laws and – my ultimate goal – Muslims persecuted and recruited to our cause. I deal not in actions but in reactions. I am a manipulator of politics. I work through the idiocies of my supposed enemies.

We should not alter laws, not infringe liberties, not persecute Muslims

Textbooks on terrorism define its effects in four stages: first the horror, then the publicity, then the political grandstanding, and finally the climactic shift in policy. The initial act is banal. The atrocities in Brussels happen almost daily on the streets of Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus. Western missiles and Isis bombs kill more innocents in a week than die in Europe in a year. The difference is the media response. A dead Muslim is an unlucky mutt in the wrong place at the wrong time. A dead European is front-page news.

Anthea: The FACT that innocent Kurds are being slaughtered in their own homes by the Turkish state will NEVER be front page news

So on Tuesday the TV news channels behaved like Isis recruiting sergeants. Their blanket hyperbole showed not the slightest restraint (nor for that matter did that of most newspapers). The BBC flew Huw Edwards to Brussels. It flashed horror across the airwaves continually for 24 hours, incanting the words “panic”, “threat”, “menace” and “terror”. Vox pops wallowed in blood and guts. One reporter rode a London tube escalator to show possible future targets, to scare the wits out of commuters. It was a terrorist’s wildest dream.

With the ground thus prepared, the politicians entered on cue. France’s President Hollande declared “all of Europe has been hit”, megaphoning Isis’s crime. His approval rating immediately jumped.

David Cameron dived into his Cobra bunker and announced the UK “faces a very real terror threat”. An attack is now “highly likely”, according to the security services. Flags fly at half-mast. The Eiffel Tower is decked in Belgian colours. President Obama interrupts his Cuba visit to stand “in solidarity with Belgium”. Donald Trump declares that “Belgium and France are literally disintegrating”. It is hard to imagine what could more effectively promote the Isis cause.

A photograph of a woman in shock with torn clothes and injured foot has gone around the world. But who is she and where is she now?

Osama bin Laden set out on 9/11 to depict western nations as feckless and paranoid, their liberalism a surface charade easily punctured. A few explosions and their pretensions would wither and they would turn as repressive as any Muslim state.

By Tuesday evening, such a feeding frenzy was in full flood as the security lobby piled in. Cameron’s snoopers’ charter (or “investigatory powers” bill) was lauded as vital to national security. This is despite continued opposition both in parliament and from intelligence experts. This month in the Times, former NSA technical director Bill Binney ridiculed the bill’s “incredibly intrusive” powers of untargeted interception. Each citizen’s browsing history will soon be in the possession of the government, vulnerable to hacking by every marketer and blackmailer in the land.

Under the government’s Prevent strategy, universities and schools must develop programmes to counter “non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism”. The bureaucracy will be awesome. Primary schools are reportedly asking children to spy on one another to check “suspicious behaviour”. So must passengers on Virgin trains, as requested after each station. England is becoming old East Germany.

The Brexit camp, in the person of Ukip’s Nigel Farage, claims that Brussels proves the need to leave Europe. The home secretary, Theresa May, says the opposite. Terrorists would roam free, she says, since it would take 143 days to process terrorist DNA samples as against 15 minutes in the EU.

Reacting to terrorist incidents otherwise, in ways that do not play into terrorism’s hands, may seem hard. A free media feels a duty to report events, as politicians feel a duty to show they can protect the public. That it’s hard to show restraint is no excuse for actively promoting terror. Everyone involved in this week’s reaction, from journalists to politicians to security lobbyists, has an interest in terrorism. There is money, big money, to be made – the more terrifying it is presented, the more money.

We can respond to events in Brussels with a quiet and dignified sympathy, with candles and silences. To downplay something is not to ignore it. The terrorists have specific aims, deploying their atrocities for a political cause. There is no sensible defence in a free society against atrocity. But there is a defence against its purpose. It is to avoid hysteria, to show caution and a measure of courage, not Cameron’s lapse into public fear. It is not to alter laws, not to infringe liberties, not to persecute Muslims.

During the more dangerous and consistent IRA bombing campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, Labour and Conservative governments insisted on treating terrorism as criminal, not political. They relied on the police and security services to guard against a threat that could never be eliminated, only diminished. On the whole it worked, and without undue harm to civil liberties.

Those who live under freedom know it demands a price, which is a degree of risk. We pay the state to protect us – but calmly, without constant boasting or fearmongering. We know that, in reality, life in Britain has never been safer. That it suits some people to pretend otherwise does not alter the fact.

In his admiral manual, Terrorism: How to Respond, the Belfast academic Richard English defines the threat to democracy as not the “limited danger” of death and destruction. It is the danger “of provoking ill-judged, extravagant and counterproductive state responses”.

The menace of Brussels lies not in the terror, but in the reaction to the terror. It is the reaction we should fear. But liberty never emerges from a Cobra bunker.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ty-belgium

[Anthea]

ISIS planned attack on nuclear facility

The ISIS cell that struck in the Brussels airport and metro originally considered attacking a Belgian nuclear facility

The latest claims are linked with reports tying the El Bakraoui brothers to the covert filming of a top Belgian nuclear official. Officials had previously speculated that after raids on an ISIS safe house and the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the attackers decided they needed to strike quickly and at more easily accessible targets.

Begs the grim question:

How safe are the world's nuclear facilities?

[Anthea]

Six people have been detained in Brussels in connection with terror attack

6 arrested in Brussels raid

Police detained six people in raids Thursday night as investigators race to uncover the network behind this week’s terror attacks in the Belgian capital.

The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office didn’t provide details about who had been detained in the Brussels raids, why they had been apprehended or whether they will face charges.

“It will be decided tomorrow if these people will remain in custody,” the office said in a statement released late Thursday.

So far, authorities have said they believe five men played a part in Tuesday’s bombings in Belgium that killed 31 people and injured 330. Three of the attackers are dead. Two of them could still be on the loose.

Investigators are combing over evidence from surveillance footage and the explosives stash they seized from an apparent hideaway in a suburb.

Any clue, any lead, any witness could be critical in the race to stop the next terrorist attack on European soil.

Surveillance footage shows man with bag

Khalid El Bakraoui, one of the terrorists who bombed a train near the Maelbeek metro station, is dead. Authorities believe a second unidentified person was also involved in that attack, a senior Belgian security source told CNN. But investigators don’t know where that suspect is — or whether he’s dead or alive.

Surveillance footage shows the man holding a large bag at the station, according to Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. It’s not clear if he was among the at least 20 killed in that blast, RTBF said.

Authorities have released a grainy image of another suspect who they believe is on the run.

That man, they say, shown in photographs wearing a black hat, was one of three attackers at Brussels Airport. Authorities say he planted a bomb at the airport and left. The other two men in the photographs are believed to be the suicide bombers.

Fair to ask whether ‘we missed the chance’

Did Belgian authorities miss a chance to stop at least one of the suspects involved in the attacks?

Interior Minister Jan Jambon suggested Thursday that’s a legitimate question, after Turkish officials revealed that Belgian authorities had been flagged back in 2015 when Turkey captured Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border. El Bakraoui was deported to the Netherlands and set free.

Bakraoui had been sentenced to nine years in prison in Belgium back in 2010 for opening fire on police officers with a Kalashnikov during a robbery, according to broadcaster RTBF and CNN affiliate RTL. Needless to say, he didn’t serve all that time.

“Given the facts, it is justified that … people ask how it is possible that someone was released early and we missed the chance when he was in Turkey to detain him,” said Jambon, whose offer to resign was rebuffed by Prime Minister Charles Michel.

Belgian authorities also are facing criticism for taking so long to track down Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was captured last week after four months on the run. Abdeslam hid in plain sight just blocks from the Brussels neighborhood where he grew up before his arrest.

Investigators suspect Abdeslam planned to be part of an attack by the same ISIS cell that lashed out Tuesday in Brussels, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN’s Paul Cruickshank.

Bomber brothers’ homes searched

Authorities looked Wednesday at the Brussels homes of the Bakraoui brothers. Those two searches “were not conclusive,” the federal prosecutor’s office said.

Homes were searched Thursday in several areas in and around the city, officials said.

As one operation was apparently underway in the neighborhood of Schaerbeek, investigators sealed off streets for several blocks. It was not immediately clear why such a large area had been cordoned.

As investigations continue, a larger question looms: What could happen next?

Not long ago, Western authorities believed ISIS was focused on taking territory in Syria and Iraq, not lashing out elsewhere. But U.S. officials now think the extremist group has been sending trained militants to Europe for some time.

These men don’t necessarily follow orders directly from ISIS headquarters. But they build on what they’ve learned, as well as a shared philosophy and approach, to develop their own terror cells and hatch their own plots.

How many more ISIS militants are in Europe, poised to attack? That’s not clear.

For now, though, the top priority is tracking down the two men linked directly to Tuesday’s terror.

http://wgntv.com/2016/03/24/6-arrested- ... sels-raid/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Viewed as gangsters, Brussels bombers were able to plot unseen
By Philip Blenkinsop

The Bakraoui brothers' evolution from violent criminals to Islamist suicide bombers fits a pattern of time spent in jail for gun crime, followed by dodged parole meetings and missed opportunities to spot their drift into Islamic State's orbit.

Brahim El Bakraoui blew himself up last Tuesday morning in the departure hall of Brussels airport. Just over an hour later Khalid detonated his bomb on a Brussels metro train.

Neither man was considered a radical threat by Belgian authorities until December, although Turkey had expelled Brahim in July 2015 believing he was trying to join fighters in Syria.

There are suggestions the brothers were radicalized in jail. Whatever the facts about their radicalization, their case highlights the failure by Belgian authorities to keep pace with the changing profile of the Islamist danger.

Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a specialist on jihadism who has maintained contacts with Belgians fighting in Syria, said Belgian authorities had failed to find militants like the Bakraouis in time because they were looking at the "wrong list" of suspects and did not see them as counter-terrorism targets.

The Bakraoui brothers, he said, were labeled simply as gangsters and put on a list of money-motivated criminals, while authorities hunting potential Islamist radicals focused on those with established religious credentials.

"It proved wrong. Now they are merging the lists," Van Ostaeyen said.

A Belgian government official confirmed that a merging of information streams across different police agencies and specializations was a key part of recent changes in practice.

It is belated recognition of what security officials, including the head of the EU police agency, have told Reuters are multiplying links between Islamic State militants and criminal gangs, ranging from Balkan mafias supplying guns to petty drug dealers.

These criminals' networking skills and underworld contacts are well suited to the workings of Islamist cells.

PLAIN DAYLIGHT

Both Bakraoui brothers were well known to police and the judiciary.

Brahim, 29, was given a 10-year sentence for attempted murder in September 2010 for firing a Kalashnikov at police and wounding one officer after a failed robbery at a Brussels money exchange office in January of that year.

He was let out on parole four years later, went missing at the end of May only to be picked up on the Syrian border by Turkish police in June 2015, having already violated his release conditions by being out of contact with his parole office.

Expelled to Amsterdam - it was his choice of destination - a month later, Belgium did nothing to detain him despite a warning from Ankara. That revelation sparked uproar this week and the offer of resignation from two Belgian ministers.

His presence in Turkey, let alone on the Syrian border, was enough to have ensured he should have been jailed on his return home, Justice Minister Koen Geens acknowledged.

"That was the only moment the link could have been made ... and we missed it," he said of the failure to realize that a man with a penchant for violence had become religiously radical.

It also took until August for him to be placed on a wanted list, and then only on a national posting. Might he have been caught if Belgium had issued an international arrest warrant?

Europol director Rob Wainwright said his agency had urged national authorities to share the maximum amount of information, but their record was patchy.

"The urgency of the terrorist threat illustrated by attacks since 2014 has demanded an improvement in that situation," he told Reuters, adding that there had been a significant increase in information shared in recent months.

The Belgian government official said he believed Brussels and Paris had set Europeans an example of cooperation since the Nov. 13 attacks in the French capital. "But up to now," he conceded, "everyone tends to keep their best cards face down."

YOUNGER BROTHER RENTED PARIS ATTACKS SAFE HOUSE

Brother Khalid, 27, was given a five-year jail term in February 2011 for car-jacking as part of a group armed with Kalashnikovs. Among the gang was a man who two years earlier had been sprung from a Brussels court by an armed accomplice who forced lawyers and police to lie on the floor.

Khalid was released on probation in December 2013 and, holding down evening service sector jobs, met his parole conditions until April 2015, when police stopped him in a car traveling the wrong way down a one-way street.

Beside him was one of the members of his earlier car-jacking gang, a man who he was barred from meeting. A court in May issued him a warning, but did not send him back to jail.

At the end of October, he disappeared.

"He did not reply to court summons, did not answer the telephone and was no longer at the address he had supplied as his residence," said prosecutor Christian Henry, adding that a court last month ordered him to return to prison, although by that time he was no longer found.

Khalid became the subject on international arrest warrant on December 11 for the charge of terrorism. He was found to have rented, under a false name, a flat used as a safe house for the Paris attackers - part of an emerging Franco-Belgian network.

Critics have said the men were let out too early. Belgian courts can grant prisoners parole after they have served only a third of their sentence. That compares with half for longer sentences in Britain and two-thirds in Germany.

Justice Minister Geens told parliament that Khalid was only released 11 months before his term was due to end, while Brahim had appeared to cooperate fully until mid-2015.

Defending his ministry, he said: "The El Bakraoui brothers' past was not as negative as it's been portrayed this week."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgi ... SKCN0WS07Q

[Anthea]

Nuclear alert after security officer 'found dead with his pass missing'

A security officer at a Belgian nuclear plant has reportedly been found dead with his work pass stolen. This disturbing development, revealed by the newspaper Derniere Heure on Saturday and not yet confirmed by officials, follows concerns that the Brussels bombers wanted to build a radioactive dirty bomb — but apparently shelved the plan after security was stepped up at Belgium’s nuclear plants following intelligence warnings.

The security officer was murdered on Thursday evening as he walked his dog in the city of Charleroi, but news of the killing only emerged on Saturday. His pass was quickly cancelled, according to officials.

Investigators are exploring a theory that the man, who has not been named, was killed to steal his pass and gain access to a nuclear facility. Nuclear power plants are known to be targets for the terror network behind the Brussels bombings and the Paris attacks in November.

Eleven nuclear workers in Belgium had their work passes revoked after intelligence warnings.

Ibrahim and Khalid El-Bakraoui, the two brothers believed to have blown themselves up at Brussels airport and a metro station, are also suspected of involvement in an Islamic State plot to make a bomb that could have contaminated a large populated area with radioactive material.

A senior nuclear industry official was secretly filmed by jihadists last year, Belgium’s nuclear authority said, apparently with the intention of abducting him and obtaining radioactive material.

The El-Bakraoui brothers were linked to the surveillance of the head of Belgium’s nuclear research and development programme.

However, soldiers were not deployed to guard nuclear facilities until March 4 - two weeks after the filming was discovered. Despite the revelation of the surveillance on February 17, the interior minister, Jan Jambon, initially rejected the proposal, saying: “Nothing indicates a specific threat to nuclear power plants… This is why we are not planning any military support.”

But the government soon changed its mind and on March 4 approved the deployment of 140 soldiers to guard five nuclear facilities.

In the hours following the Brussels bombings, two Belgian nuclear power plants were evacuated.

Security measures have been stepped up at France’s many nuclear power plants, a French intelligence source told the Telegraph on Saturday. Workers have been screened for Islamist sympathies and a number had their security passes revoked.
Suspect shot in leg at train station as police make more arrests

Police arrested three more people on Friday as investigations into Tuesday's suicide bombings by Islamist militants in Brussels threw up more links to killings in Paris last year.

The federal prosecutor's office said the operation was connected to the arrest in Paris on Thursday of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack.

Nine people in total have been arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swoop on Islamic State militants they link both to the Brussels bombings that killed 31 people and to the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130.

Ahead of one of the arrests, heavily armed police and troops with trucks cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled explosions.

Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Mr Clerfayt as saying the suspect had been detained after being wounded and that he was linked to Tuesday's suicide bombings in Brussels.

Witnesses said police appeared to shoot the man in the leg at a tram stop and that he appeared to have his daughter with him.

"We heard 'Don't move'. The man was sitting at the bus stop, a bus stop with a glass wall, and we heard a small detonation and a big detonation," said Norman Kabir, 38, an electrician who lives and works nearby.

"Then the police came, took the little girl who was shouting 'Dad', she seemed terrified and the man got shot in the leg anyway because he was still moving," Kabir told reporters.

"Then the police asked him to move his bag. He was lying on the ground, but he did it and pushed the bag and a robot from the mine-sweeping brigade arrived. It came, grabbed the bag and took it away, then they took the guy, put him in a car and left. It took 20 seconds."

The attacks have raised questions over Europe's ability to combat the threat of terrorism. Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the Brussels suicide bombers, was on a US counterterrorism watch list before the November attacks in Paris and his brother Khalid was put on the list shortly afterward, sources familiar with the matter said.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said six people were held in Brussels on Thursday, of whom three were released and three were remanded in custody facing possible charges.

Three others were detained on Friday following the arrest overnight in France of Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman sentenced to 10 years in absentia in Brussels last July as part of an Islamist recruiting network dubbed the Syrian Connection.

In Germany, Der Spiegel magazine said German police had arrested two people, one of whom had received phone messages with the name of the metro station bomber and the word "fin" - French for "end" - three minutes before the metro blast. The German interior ministry declined comment.

The Brussels attacks came a week after Belgian police killed a militant during a house raid that led them to Salah Abdeslam, the only suspected participant in the Paris attacks to have been captured alive.

On Friday prosecutors said Abdeslam had declined to talk about Tuesday's attacks, having declared soon after his capture that he would exercise his right to be silent.

Belgian daily De Morgen said investigators had identified a new suspect they believe played a role in the Brussels bombings, 28-year-old Syrian Naim al-Hamed. The paper said he was on a list circulated to the security services of other European countries after Tuesday's attacks, and was also suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks.

In a sign of fears over the country's security, Mariah Carey has cancelled her gig in the Belgian capital.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... atest.html

[Anthea]

A suspicious package has prompted evacuation in Schaerbeek area of Brussels, Belgian media reported.

“Someone threw a backpack inside the tram …and fled,” police told RTL Belgium, adding that trams in the area were halted.

A helicopter has been seen patrolling above the area.

No further info known at this time

[Anthea]

Bloomberg

Belgium Charges More Terror Suspects as Attacks Death Toll Rises

Three are held after police raids across Belgium on Sunday

Airport tests temporary arrangements before re-open decision

Belgium charged more suspects in expanding counter-terrorism probes as the death toll rose in last week’s suicide bombings in Brussels and the airport was set to decide when it will re-open.

The Health Ministry said 35 people died in the March 22 attacks at the airport’s departures hall and at a downtown subway station. The federal crisis center said 28 of the victims have been positively identified, with 12 foreigners among them.

Following raids in several parts of the country on Sunday, three suspects identified as Yassine A., de Mohamed B. and de Aboubaker O. were charged with participating in a terrorist group, the federal prosecutors office said in statement on Monday. A fourth suspect was released.

Terrorism probes advanced across Europe amid fears of further attacks, with suspects arrested in Italy and the Netherlands. Belgian prosecutors said late Sunday that an Algerian man being held in Italy is suspected of participating in a ring that produced falsified documents for some of the men responsible for last November’s attacks in Paris and “probably also by Salah Abdeslam,” the only surviving suspect in the assaults. Abdeslam has been in Belgian custody since March 18.

The prosecutors are looking into whether the counterfeiters also provided fake documents to the perpetrators of the attacks in the Belgian capital. The Algerian suspect, detained in Salerno on Saturday under a European arrest warrant requested by Belgium, was identified by Ansa news agency as Djamal Eddine Ouali.

Dutch police on Sunday arrested a 32-year-old Frenchman in Rotterdam on suspicion of involvement in planning a terrorist attack, Belga reported, citing prosecutors. German police earlier arrested two men in connection with the Brussels attacks.

Meanwhile, Belgian riot police used water cannons to push back hundreds of protesters in downtown Brussels at the scene of a temporary memorial to victims of the assaults. Police made 10 arrests in connection with the demonstrations, Belga reported.

At the airport in Zaventem, where two suicide blasts ripped through the departures hall, officials will test repair work and temporary arrangements on Tuesday before making a decision on when to re-open the terminal to passengers, even then only on a partial basis. “When this partial restart will take place is not yet decided,” the airport said on its website.

The Maelbeek metro station, the site of the other attack, is closed to passengers but trains are passing through.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... or-attacks

[Anthea]

Where Brussels Stands One Week After Deadly Attacks

The main suspect believed to have helped execute the bombings at the international airport in Brussels remains on the run a week after the attacks, according to authorities.

The death toll from the coordinated bombings at the airport and a subway station in the center of Brussels killed at least 35 people, with that number rising as recently as this weekend after more people who were being treated at hospitals died.

Suspect on the Loose

The suspect, who has still not been publicly identified by police, is one of the most wanted men in Europe.

He was pictured on airport surveillance footage walking with two suicide bombers who have been named after dying in the dual blasts at the airport.

Dubbed the "man in white" because he was wearing a lighter shirt and lighter jacket than the other bombers, the third man is believed to have fled the scene after his bomb did not detonate when the others did, authorities said.

The undetonated third bomb was found in a suitcase by police who responded to the scene, according to authorities, who noted that the bomb later went off on its own while the bomb squad was on site because it was so unstable.

Questions Surrounding Subway Bombing

The suicide bomber believed to be responsible for the explosion at the Maelbeek subway station, where at least 13 people died, was identified as Khalid El-Bakraoui.

Investigators were able to determine that Khalid, 27, was the younger brother of Ibrahim El-Bakraoui, one of the two suicide bombers at the airport.

Questions remain about whether there was a second possible suspect at the subway station.

Detainee Released

Several arrests were announced as a result of raids and investigations that took place after the bombings, but most were released shortly after, authorities said.

One man, later identified as Faycal Cheffou, was arrested on Thursday and charged with terror-related offenses but was released Monday. The Belgian prosecutor did not clarify what evidence authorities had against him.

"The evidence that led to the arrest of Faycal C. has not been backed up by the ongoing investigation. As a result, he has been released by the judge," according to a statement from the prosecutor's office.

Security Level Downgraded

After being immediately placed on the highest alert level following the attacks on March 22, the country's security level has since been downgraded.

By being lowered to a level three on Thursday from the highest level, four, there are still certain precautions that will continue, authorities said.

Paul Van Tieghem, director of the office that evaluates threats to the nation, said there was no indication that another attack is imminent but the threat is still serious and possible.

Random checks at subway stations were expected to continue and the subway system is gradually reopening with increased police and military presence in place.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/bru ... d=38002143

[Anthea]

Brussels and Paris terror suspect 'was given £3,000 in UK park'



A suspect in the Paris and Brussels terror attacks was handed £3,000 during a secret meeting in Birmingham months before the killings, a jury has heard.

Mohamed Abrini - the so-called "man in the hat" - came to the UK in July 2015 and was given the money in a park, Kingston Crown Court heard.

Zakaria Boufassil, 26, who is accused of handing over the cash, denies preparing for acts of terrorism.

A second man, Mohammed Ali Ahmed, has pleaded guilty to the same offence.

Abrini became known as "the man in the hat" following his suspected involvement in the Brussels terror attack in March this year, which killed 32 people at an airport and metro station, the jury heard.

Prosecuting, Max Hill QC told the court Abrini is also suspected of being connected to attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, which killed 130 people.

Mr Hill said Abrini travelled to the UK between 9 and 16 July 2015.

Mobile phone analysis

He said there "can be no doubt" the money was handed over to him while in the UK "with the intention of assisting acts of terrorism".

"That much is clear from the guilty plea by Mohammed Ali Ahmed. Mr Boufassil, denies that he personally intended to assist in the preparation of terrorist acts.

"We suggest he is lying. We suggest that he was clearly acting together with Ahmed when the money was handed to Abrini," he added.

The court heard that Abrini, a Belgian citizen of Moroccan descent, arrived at Heathrow on 9 July and headed to Birmingham by coach the following day.

There was telephone contact between the men - but also technical evidence that their phones had been in close proximity.

According to analysis of mobile phone masts, during 10 July Abrini's mobile phone and those of Mr Boufassil and Ahmed were logged as being in Small Heath Park in the city.

The following day, the three phones came together again in the same location.

Mr Hill said: "You can be sure that Ahmed, Abrini and Mr Boufassil met that day - that was the handover of the money to Abrini."

'Intention of handover'

The £3,000 allegedly came from a bank account set up by another man who had previously left the UK to fight with the self-styled Islamic State group (IS) in Syria.

Most of it was from benefits payments, the court heard.

"The actual use of the money handed to Abrini is not part of the offence charged," said Mr Hill.

"There is no clear evidence one way or another. If it is suggested to you that Abrini may or did use some of the cash given to him to gamble in a casino, that does not undermine the criminal offence.

"What matters is the conduct in question, the handing over of the cash to Abrini and the intention behind the handover. What they do with it is another matter."

Abrini, currently in custody, was an associate of two men believed to be responsible for the Paris attacks - Salah Abdeslam and Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

His brother had also been killed fighting in Syria for IS, the court heard.

Following the alleged handover, Abrini moved on to Manchester before flying back to Belgium from Birmingham.

He was questioned about the UK trip by Belgian investigators, the court heard.

When his phone was later seized, police found that it contained a photo of Small Heath Park.

The trial continues

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38091965