Bombed Brussels airport may not be fully operational for months
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BRUSSELS airport remained closed yesterday despite drills to test resuming partial services following the suicide bombs that struck its departure hall.
Zaventem airport has been closed since twin blasts on March 22 in coordinated suicide attacks claimed by the Islamic State group and which also hit Maalbeek metro station in the center of the Belgian capital.
A total of 32 people were killed in Belgium’s worst attacks, the government said, down from an earlier toll of 35 following confusion between two lists of people who had died at the scene and in hospital.
“After thorough verification: number of victims goes down to 32. Still 94 people in hospital,” Health Minister Maggie de Block tweeted.
All the victims have now been identified — many of them foreign nationals, testament to the cosmopolitan nature of a city that is home to both the European Union and NATO.
Hundreds of employees returned to the airport on Tuesday for a large-scale test run to determine if services could resume yesterday — but those hopes were dashed.
Arnaud Feist, the airport’s chief executive, has warned it could take months for Zaventem to be fully operational again.
The city’s metro system was set to be largely back to normal, apart from Maelbeek station where the bombing took place.
As Brussels struggles to get back on its feet, criticism of authorities’ handling of the case has mounted after the sole suspect charged over the attacks was freed on Monday for lack of evidence.
Prosecutors had charged the suspect, who was named by media as Faycal Cheffou, with “terrorist murder” and were investigating whether he was the third airport attacker who fled after his bomb did not detonate.
But the hunt is now back on for the so-called “man in the hat” seen in CCTV footage next to the two suicide bombers at the airport.
Cheffou’s lawyer, Olivier Martins, told RTBF television his client was let go because he had an alibi, based on telephone analysis, that showed he was at home at the time of the attacks.
The inquiry into the attacks has been dogged by accusations that Belgium missed a series of leads in cracking down on a jihadist network linked to the Brussels bombings as well as the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.
In the most damning revelation, Turkey has accused Belgium of ignoring warnings from Ankara after it deported airport suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui as a “terrorist fighter” last year following his arrest near the Syrian border.
Two Belgian ministers offered to resign last week after the Turkish link emerged.
The Dutch interior minister said yesterday that he had made another factual error in a letter informing parliament that US intelligence warned the authorities about two Belgian brothers a week before the pair carried out the Brussels attacks.
On Tuesday, Ard van der Steur was forced to send a correction of his first letter addressed to parliament about the intelligence received on Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui.
In another missive yesterday, van der Steur wrote that contrary to what he said on Tuesday, it was not the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that had warned that two brothers were being sought by Belgian authorities.
The information actually came from the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division and was forwarded by the Dutch embassy liaison in Washington, the minister wrote.
US investigators are helping their European partners unravel the network behind the attacks.
But legislators are demanding to know why Dutch agencies did not act on US intelligence received on March 16 that Ibrahim was sought by the Belgian authorities for “his criminal background,” while Khalid was wanted for “terrorism, extremism and recruitment.”
Ibrahim was not on international wanted lists when he was put on a flight from Turkey to Amsterdam on July 14, 2015 and disappeared, the minister said on Tuesday.
He was violating conditions of parole in Belgium and avoided potential arrest by requesting that Turkey deport him to the closest neighboring country, the Netherlands, rather than being sent home.
Khalid had been missing since October.
Van der Steur said during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday night that the Netherlands had “done all that could have been done” with the information it received. However, Belgian federal police denied the minister’s assertion that their Dutch counterparts had shared US intelligence about the brothers at a meeting on March 17.
Four men were detained in Rotterdam over the weekend. The main suspect, identified as 32-year-old Frenchman Anis B., wanted by France for allegedly helping prepare an attack that was never carried out, is resisting extradition — a legal process expected to take around three months.
Two others, described as “having an Algerian background,” are also being held on terror charges. A fourth has been released without charge.
On Tuesday night, in the Portuguese town of Leiria, emotional football fans fell silent for a minute at the start of a friendly match against Belgium that was supposed to have taken place in Brussels.
The Belgian team, who lost 2-1, wore shirts that read: “In memory of all victims, Brussels, 22.03.2016.”
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