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Riot at Brussels attacks shrine; 13 anti-terror raids made Probe into Brussels bombings expands across Europe
(35 minutes later)
BRUSSELS — Belgian riot police clashed Sunday with hundreds of right-wing hooligans at a temporary shrine honoring victims of the Brussels suicide bombings, as investigators launched fresh anti-terror raids, taking four more people into custody. BRUSSELS — The investigation into last week’s deadly attacks in Brussels extended farther across Europe on Sunday after Italian police arrested a new suspect thought to have helped Islamic State militants slip into Western Europe unnoticed.
Police used water cannon when scuffles broke out in front of the Bourse, which has become a symbolic rallying point for people to pay their respects to those who died in Tuesday’s attacks. Black clad men carrying an anti-Islamic State group banner with an expletive on it trampled parts of the shrine, shouting Nazi slogans. Ten were arrested and two police officers injured. Italian authorities said late Saturday that they had captured an Algerian man suspected of providing several Islamic State supporters with false identification documents, allowing them to evade authorities as they plotted attacks in Belgium and France.
“We had 340 hooligans from different football clubs who came to Brussels and we knew for sure that they would create some trouble,” Police Commissioner Christian De Coninck said. “It was a very difficult police operation because lots of families with kids were here.” “The Algerian arrested today in Salerno is part of a network of forgers of residency” documents, police said in a message on Twitter.
Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur expressed his disgust, with Belgium still in mourning over the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and subway, which killed at least 31 people and injured some 270. The arrest added to an emerging picture of the network behind the worst attack on Belgian soil since World War II and is another striking indication of the growing reach of the Islamic State beyond its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“The police were not deployed to protect people from these hooligans but a whole other threat,” said Mayeur told RTL television. According to the Italian news agency ANSA, 40-year-old Djamal Eddine Ouali had been the subject of a Belgian arrest warrant since January. ANSA said he was suspected to have given the falsified papers to Salah Abdeslam, a suspected member of the cell that carried out the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, who is now in Belgian custody. Ouali is also believed to have furnished documents to Najim Laachraoui, suspected to have been one of the suicide bombers at the Brussels airport on Tuesday, and another man killed by Belgian authorities in a raid this month.
People trying to pay their respects were also dismayed. The attackers killed at least 28 people on Tuesday at Brussels Airport and, an hour later, in a crowded subway car.
“It was important for us to be here symbolically,” said Samia Orosemane, a 35-year-old comedian. But, she added, “there were lots of men who were here and doing the Nazi salute, shouting ‘death to Arabs’ and so we weren’t able to get through.” In Belgium, another suspect linked to the attacks was charged, local media reported Sunday. The man, identified as Abderrahmane A., has been in custody since Friday and faces charges of belonging to a terrorist organization
“We are all here today for peace, and for the brotherhood among peoples. Not for right-wing ideas. It’s neither the time nor the place,” said Theophile Mouange, 52. Belgian police did not provide additional details on Sunday, as they expanded their hunt for new clues. Authorities conducted 13 searches in Brussels and other areas on Sunday, the federal prosecutor’s office said. Four people remain in custody.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, said Sunday morning’s raids were linked a “federal case regarding terrorism” but did not specify whether it had any links to the March 22 attacks. The growing charge list may help ease tensions that were visible on Sunday even as Belgium, a largely Catholic country, marked Easter Sunday.
Thirteen raids were launched in the capital and the northern cities of Mechelen and Duffel. An investigating judge was to decide later whether to keep the four in custody. Five were released after questioning. [VIDEO: Protestors disrupt memorial to bombing victims]
Tuesday’s bomb attacks are also tearing at the fabric of the government, justice system and police, and Belgium’s interior minister sought Sunday to contain the growing criticism of the government’s handling of the tragedy. In a sign of the nervousness, riot police were deployed around a memorial site in the center of Brussels on Sunday afternoon after several hundred men dressed in black poured into the area. The men, apparently soccer fans, disrupted a mostly quiet vigil and began shouting slogans against the Islamic State and, according to some media reports, immigrants. The crowd later dispersed.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon conceded Sunday that decades of neglect had hampered the government’s response to violent extremism. He said the government has invested 600 million euros ($670 million) into police and security services over the past two years but that Belgium’s justice system and security services are still lagging behind. Authorities had hoped to avoid this kind of alarm when they urged organizers to postpone a solidarity rally planned for Sunday, acknowledging that police could not provide adequate security.
Jambon, whose offer to resign Thursday was declined by the prime minister, also acknowledged some shortcomings prior to the attacks. Across the continent, fears of renewed attacks remain elevated. In St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, worshipers were subject to tight security as they flocked to hear Pope Francis deliver his Easter address. Speaking to the crowed, the pope labeled terrorism a “blind and brutal form of violence,” according to the Associated Press.
“There have been errors,” he said on VRT television. In Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State remains defiant even as it faces pressure from the United States and its allies from the air and from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the ground. On Saturday, Syria claimed to have recaptured the historic city of Palmyra, under Islamic State control for months.
Jambon said it takes time to hire anti-terror specialists and specialized equipment and insisted that the government’s new investments need time before they become visible to the public. [Security forces missed chances before the Brussels attacks]
As international pressure on Belgium has mounted for serving as an unwitting rear-base for extremist fighters who launched the Nov. 13 massacres that left 130 dead in Paris, the government has felt forced to defend its choices and the actions of investigators. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are demanding an inquiry. Over the weekend, militants continued to celebrate attacks that they said had demonstrated the weakness of Western defenses. In a video released Saturday, a Dutch-speaking fighter, identified as Abu Hanifa al-Beljiki, addressed the government of Belgium.
Belgian police and the army have been deployed, sometimes around the clock, at major buildings and sites in the capital in increasing numbers since November, when Brussels went into lockdown over fears that top Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam had returned and was hiding there. “You learned nothing from the lessons of Paris, because you continued fighting Islam and the Muslims,” he said, according to a transcript from the SITE Intelligence Group. “For this I want to tell you that the attack in Brussels is reaping what you had sown with your own hands.”
As it turned out, Abdeslam did return, but police did not find and arrest him until March 18, four days before suspects from his network exploded suicide bombs in Brussels. The video followed Belgian authorities’ announcement Saturday that they may have found the most-wanted remaining suspect in Tuesday’s attacks. It was a welcome development for the government in Brussels, facing widespread criticism over its failure to chase down leads that might have helped prevent the attacks.
Belgian investigators have been slammed for not questioning Abdeslam long enough or hard enough after he was shot in the leg during his arrest. Police have also been criticized for taking too long to get to Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning after two suicide bombers blew themselves up there — and left an even bigger third suitcase full of explosives that did not go off. [The Islamic State is on the retreat on multiple fronts]
Jambon and Justice Minister Keen Goens were grilled by lawmakers Friday over how authorities failed to arrest suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui before he blew himself in the packed departure hall at Brussels Airport. According to a European security official, the man is Fayçal Cheffou, whose explosives-laden suitcase apparently did not detonate.
Turkey has said that Bakraoui — whose brother Khalid was the suicide bomber at the Maelbeek subway station on Tuesday — was caught near Turkey’s border with Syria in 2015 and Ankara had warned Brussels and the Netherlands that he was “a foreign terrorist fighter.” Belgian authorities said they did not know he was suspected of terror-related activities until after he was deported to the Netherlands. The man, whom Belgian officials have not fully identified, was charged Saturday with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders.”
Jambon also said the Brussels subway network had been told to shut off services around 20 minutes before the attack at the subway station, which is close to both the European Union headquarters and the U.S. embassy. He did not fully explain why it was not closed in time, raising more questions about the efficiency of Belgium’s security services. According to Belgian media, Cheffou has identified himself as a journalist in the past and has promoted radical Islamist beliefs.
On Sunday, Italian police in the southern city of Salerno said they had arrested an Algerian wanted in Belgium for an alleged false ID crime ring. Djamal Eddine Ouali was arrested Saturday in the town of Bellizzi, said Luigi Amato, the head of Salerno police’s anti-terrorism squad. Ouali, 40, was being held in jail while authorities expect extradition procedures to soon begin. Belgian authorities also have charged a man identified as “Rabah N.” with taking part in a terrorist group and another man, identified as “Aboubakar A.,” with a terrorism-related offense.
Belgian prosecutors said Sunday that the man is thought to have made false documents for some of the attackers in the Nov. 13 massacre in Paris, including top suspect Salah Abdeslam. Investigators are trying to establish whether the same false ID ring provided papers for the March 22 attackers. Belgian media has reported that Abderrahmane Ameroud, presumably the same person as the one charged on Sunday, is another person linked to the attacks. France sentenced the Algerian to seven years for recruiting fighters for Afghanistan. The case was tied to the 2001 assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary Afghan guerrilla leader.
___ It is not known what exactly each person is suspected to have done.
David Keyton in Brussels and Frances D’Emilio in Rome contributed. The new charges come as Belgian authorities admit missteps in their handling of terrorism investigations.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Investigators acknowledged late last week that they did not question Abdeslam extensively after his March 18 arrest, possibly missing clues that might have helped them avert the disaster four days later.
[Families still in desperate wait for news after attacks]
On Sunday, Interior Minister Jan Jambon defended to local media the government’s decision-making during last week’s attacks. He has come under fire for failing to protect Brussels after the initial attack at the airport.
More than 300 people were wounded in the attacks, Belgian officials have said. Nearly half of the victims were foreign nationals, including at least two Americans. According to Belgium’s Foreign Ministry, not all of those wounded have been identified because some of them remain in a coma.
Annabell Van den Berghe contributed to this report.
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