European Union justice and interior ministers will convene later Thursday in Brussels for an emergency meeting to work out a plan to address the threat to Europe posed by jihadists and the application of anti-terrorism laws across the bloc.
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The Brussels attacks are widely thought to have been in retaliation for Abdeslam’s arrest – or to have been brought forward for fear that he might give the gang away under interrogation.
Belgium remains on high alert as authorities continue to hunt for suspects related to the bombings. RTBF said it is not clear whether the second suspect was killed in the attack.
The explosion ripped apart a train in the station, and witnesses said they saw clouds of smoke and dust coming out of the station, with many people lying by the road with bloodied faces and limbs.
A manhunt continued for one of the Brussels airport attackers who was recorded on a surveillance video and had fled the scene.
Two of the brothers identified in Tuesday’s attacks – Ibrahim and Khalid El-Bakraoui – allegedly planted a camera outside a Belgian nuclear official’s house and spied on the man, according to multiple reports. It also makes it extremely hard to predict when and how attacks will happen. Abdeslam, who had abandoned his suicide belt in Paris during the November attacks, escaped again – only to be cornered in a daring daytime raid a few days later. Both appeared to have been carried out by the same Belgium-based Islamic State cell.
On Tuesday suicide bombers linked to the ISIS detonated their explosives at Brussels Airport and on a subway train, killing 32 people including three of the attackers and injuring at least 270 more.
Brothers Brahim and Khalid (right) El Bakraoui had breached terms of their parole, but in Khalid’s case a magistrate released him. The third dead suicide bomber is believed to have been a bomb maker suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks.
Turkey said it deported Ibrahim a year ago because it suspected him of being a militant but that Belgium did not take its concerns seriously.
“The most important part of the dossier is in France”. “Here, though, he was not known as a terrorist”. “We haven’t heard from him since”, she said.
The justice minister acknowledged that “we have to be very self-critical”.
Laachraoui himself had been named as a suspect in the Paris attacks. Khalid El Bakraoui had used a false identity to rent an apartment in the Brussels neighbourhood of Forest where a shootout with police occurred during a terrorism raid last week, RTBF said. The attacks have laid bare European security failings and prompted calls for better intelligence co-operation.
“Recruitment continues – at a much lower level than we were used to, for example two years ago – but yes, it continues”, Belgium’s Interior Minister Jan Jambon said.
“You have a fragmented intelligence picture but we’re trying to help with that”, he said.
A European security official said that the attack units appear to be led by French speakers with connections to North Africa, France, and Belgium.
More than four sources with access to tallies of fighters tasked with Europe attacks independently corroborated the numbers of fighters who trained for specific attacks in Europe, including some who have spoken to fighters directly. These are all very challenging dimensions. The EU report, according to the newspaper, said that the Belgian government needed “to enhance to situational awareness at all airports and to further combat irregular migration as well as the phenomena of foreign fighters”.
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Also Thursday, Abdeslam was summoned to court in Brussels.
