When authorities made the chilling discovery in February, 140 soldiers were posted at nuke sites around the country – possibly leading the jihadists to change course and focus on softer targets, like subways and airports.
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“(Justice Minister Koen) Geens too.
Belgium lowered its threat level Thursday from the highest level, 4, to a 3.
“The danger has not gone away”, said Paul Van Tigchelt, the head of the terror assessment authority.
The man who fits this description was captured on airport CCTV walking alongside the suicide bombers, and is now being sought by police after he was allegedly seen fleeing the scene, moments after the bombs were detonated at the Zaventem airport.
His brother Khalid El Bakraoui targeted a train at a Metro station during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, killing 20 people.
The man pictured at the airport who is at large has not been identified by authorities but Belgian newspaper DH reported that he might be Najim Laachraoui, whom Belgian authorities have been searching for since last week as a suspected accomplice of Abdeslam, despite earlier reports from local media that he had been arrested.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels and Paris, which have laid bare European security failings and prompted calls for better intelligence cooperation and a tougher response to Islamic State extremists.
Authorities said he was the man in a light jacket and hat on the far right of the video footage (pictured below).
Numerous questions were prompted by Turkey’s disclosure Wednesday that it had apprehended one of the airport suicide bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, near Turkey’s border with Syria, in June 2015.
One expert involved in tracking the Islamic State said Thursday that the el-Bakraoui brothers also hoped to build a radioactive “dirty bomb” and even spied on a nuclear researcher to that end, NBC News reported.
Abdeslam, 26, a French citizen who grew up in Brussels’ heavily immigrant Molenbeek neighborhood, slipped through police fingers on multiple occasions.
Turkish officials said they warned Belgium last summer that El Bakraoui was a terrorist.
It wasn’t clear what El Bakraoui did after arriving in the Netherlands. “So he saw police officers after the attacks”, Mary said Thursday.
One disturbing detail in his confession is when Abdeslam said he has contacted “only one person, Mohammed Abrini” after giving up blowing himself up at the Stade de France.
Initially opposing to be sent home, Abdeslam wanted to return to France “to explain himself”, the news channel BFMTV quoted his lawyer Sven Mary as saying. But according to the Guardian, Mary said that Abdeslam’s hearing has been postponed to April 7.
Abdeslam has been charged for his involvement in the Paris terror attacks but has denied knowing anything about the bombings in Belgium.
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Abdeslam minimises his role in the Paris attacks which he blames on Abdehamid Abaaoud, the presumed ringleader who was killed by French police the following week, and his older brother Brahim.
