The tactic of detaining people first and asking questions later will likely become increasingly common, CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem said. “They are going to just try to find people or evidence that may stop the next terrorism attack, and they will figure out who they have under custody”. Prosecutors have not said how many attackers there were in total, or how many accomplices might be at large.
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In a frenzied day of raids and arrests, the Belgian state broadcaster reported a number of explosive blasts were heard during ongoing police operations in Brussels that have resulted in the capture of a number of suspects. So far three suicide bombers have been identified: Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui as well Najim Laacharoui.
The government meanwhile came in for a torrent of criticism, with key ministers on the back foot saying they had done everything possible to prevent Tuesday’s airport and metro attacks which left 31 dead and some 300 wounded.
Authorities are still searching for a third suspect they say was caught on surveillance video planting a bomb at
the airport before fleeing the scene. It is unclear whether it is linked to Tuesday’s attacks.
U.S Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Brussels on Friday to offer US assistance in security. “We – all of us representing countless nationalities – have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated”, Kerry said.
In a statement late Thursday, prosecutors said the arrests were made during raids in central Brussels, Jette and the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the Associated Press reported.
Police sources said Kriket had been found guilty in absentia in Brussels last July of being part of a network recruiting jihadists to Syria and sentenced to 10 years’ jail.
The news came as three people were arrested in the Forest, Saint-Gilles and Schaerbeek areas of Brussels in connection with the attacks.
At least two Americans were confirmed among those killed in the Brussels attacks, according to reports Friday.
Also on Thursday evening, French police launched an anti-terror operation in Argenteuil, north-west of Paris, following the arrest hours earlier of a man suspected of planning an attack.
Laachraoui travelled to Hungary with him previous year, while the Bakraoui brothers rented – as well as the Belgian safe house used by the Paris killers – a flat in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels where Abdeslam himself hid for three weeks after the attacks.
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Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel refused to accept the resignations of Minister of the Interior Jan Jambon and Minister of Justice Koen Geens over claims Ibrahim had been arrested and deported by Turkey, which had warned Belgium he was a “terrorist foreign fighter”.
