Belgian prime minister Charles Michel defended his country’s intelligence services and vowed to introduce a string of new security measures following criticism of Belgium’s failure to apprehend a number of its citizens ahead of Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Advertisement
Among the 18 measures set out on Thursday were an additional 400 million euros of spending in the 2016 budget for security, reinforced border checks and 520 army officers to patrol public spaces, Le Soir reported.
According to the report, Belgium will also increase the maximum period a terror suspect can be detained without charge from 24 hours to 72.
The Brussels district of Molenbeek has been at the center of investigations into last week’s attacks in Paris after it emerged that at least two of the attackers had been living there.
An official in the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said that the raids were taking place in Molenbeek and other areas of Brussels.
Mobile phone cards will no longer be sold to anonymous buyers, and police will be allowed to conduct nighttime searches of homes, now banned between 9:00 pm and 5:00 am. French media quoted an intelligence source as saying: “The Belgians just aren’t up to it”.
Michel also said “lives have been saved” because of a terror cell involving Abaaoud that Belgian security broke up in a raid in January, killing two jihadists.
France has stepped up its airstrikes against extremists in Syria since the attack, and French President Francois Hollande is going to Washington and Moscow next week to push for a stronger global coalition against IS.
“I do not accept the criticism aimed at denigrating the work of our security services”.
A total of nine people were arrested during searches of nine addresses.
Bilal Hadfi has been identified as one of three attackers at the Stade de France stadium.
Advertisement
“Religious freedom is guaranteed by the constitution but places of worship can not become places to spread jihadism”, Michel said.
