Erdogan told a news conference on Wednesday that Bakraoui was detained in the southern Turkish province of Gaziantep near the Syrian border and later deported to the Netherlands.
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Belgian ministers under fire for intelligence failings over the deadly Islamic State suicide attacks on Brussels admitted “errors” and offered to resign Thursday as police hunted two suspects still at large after the bombings.
At the time, Belgian authorities replied that Bakraoui, who had skipped parole after serving less than half of a 9-year sentence for armed robbery, was a criminal but not a militant.
A young German couple headed for a NY holiday were among the victims of the Brussels airport attack, which left the wife missing and the man in a coma, the Bild daily reported.
Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens said he was aware the man had been sent to the Netherlands from Turkey, but denied he had been flagged as a possible terrorist.
Despite Turkey’s warnings, Erdogan says, Belgium couldn’t find any ties to terrorism – so the Netherlands released Bakraoui.
He reiterated the attacks reinforced the U.S.’s determination to work closely with allies such as Turkey and other partners to defeat Daesh and other terrorists.
Belgium has admitted that it made “errors” relating to one of the Brussels attackers.
French and Belgian authorities have said that the network behind the Paris attacks was much larger than initially thought – and developments this week suggest the same group could have staged both the Paris and Brussels attacks.
Dutch justice minister Ard van der Steur said on Thursday that El Bakraoui was not on any list of suspected terrorists. That, the newspaper said, was more than a year before Belgium issued a notice for his arrest.
Khalid El Bakraoui rented under a false name the apartment in the city’s Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week. On Tuesday he triggered his bomb in the Maelbeek metro station.
A second terrorist, El Bakraoui’s brother Khalid was also let free, it was revealed by Belgian daily De Morgen. This suggests that there other problems within the Belgian justice system.
Mr. Abdeslam, captured in Belgium, reversed his position after the bombings in Brussels, which killed at least 31 and wounded about 300 on Tuesday. One hundredand twenty one people were still in hospital onThursday evening, 63 of them in a serious condition.
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Security experts believed the blasts were probably in preparation before Friday’s arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the November 13 Paris attacks.
