The BBC reports that the November 13 Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, arrested last Friday, was connected to the Brussels attacks as well. “The nuclear industry is one of the best protected areas”, Jambon said, the Independent reports. “We will come back with greater resolve – with greater strength – and we will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth”.
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Separately, the prosecutors said they had released three of the six people they detailed on Thursday. He was detained following a series of raids after this week’s bomb blasts at Brussels airport and on a rush hour train.
The taxi driver who drove the Brussels suicide bombers to the airport was not allowed to touch their explosives-laden bags and they sat in silence during the journey, Belgian newspaper DH reported citing unidentified sources.
An unnamed suspect was arrested at a subway station in Schaerbeek, and a backpack he was carrying – believed to possibly contain explosives – was detonated by bomb technicians.
On Wednesday, a Turkish official said Turkey had deported Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, who Belgian authorities say attacked the airport along with Laachraoui, to the Netherlands past year and had warned that he was a foreign fighter captured on Turkey’s border with Syria.
“I can not reach any other conclusion than one person acting negligent rather than the entire [police] organization”, Jambon said on Friday.
US officials said Thursday that they were on a terrorism watch list. The airport will remain closed until at least Saturday.
Two other men, Aboubakar A. and Rabah N., were also charged with terrorist activities and membership of a terrorist group.
European Union justice and interior ministers convened in Brussels for an emergency meeting to show “solidarity” to Belgium and work out a plan to address the threat to Europe posed by jihadists. However Prime Minister Michel refused to accept their resignations.
He added that he never saw his brother with the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, or anyone else involved in the terror attacks in France or Belgium. “The identification is still ongoing”, he said, referring to man caught on CCTV entering Maelbeek station with presumed bomber Khalid El Bakraoui.
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Harrowing new footage of the moments after the Zaventem airport attack meanwhile emerged on Belgian television, showing a lone baby left crying in the wreckage next to the lifeless body of a woman.
