Questions asked over security, as ministers offer to resign

Members of the federal coalition parties are due to begin sitting in a parliamentary investigative committee today to look into the work of the security services leading up to Tuesday’s bomb attacks at Brussels Airport and on the Brussels metro.
 
One of the main questions is how Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers at the airport, was allowed to go free after returning from Turkey, even though he was in breach of his prison release conditions.

Questions are also being raised about his brother, Khalid, who carried out the metro bombing. He had been released on probation in December 2013, after serving part of a five-year sentence for car-jacking. When stopped by police in May last year for driving the wrong way up a one-way street, he was found to be in the company of old friends from the criminal underworld, which was a direct breach of his parole conditions. Police locked him up for three days, but when brought before a court, he was released.

Khalid is now known to have been involved in preparing the Paris attacks in November, and an international warrant was issued for his arrest. It was not until February, however, that a court in Mons suspended his release licence.

A parliamentary investigative committee has all the powers of an investigating magistrate and may hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, order investigative acts by police, seize evidence and question witnesses under oath. The committee will also look at why the brothers were listed by the American security services, but not by Belgium’s OCAM risk assessment agency, and why Salah Abdeslam was questioned only briefly on one occasion between his arrest last Friday and the attacks on Tuesday.

There is still pressure on federal justice minister Koen Geens and home affairs minister Jan Jambon, so recently praised for Abdeslam’s capture. The ministers both tendered their resignations yesterday, but the resignations were refused by prime minister Charles Michel.

“We are also people of flesh and blood, with emotions and a crushing responsibility,” Jambon told VRT. “This is not our fault, but we do carry the political responsibility.”

Photo: Thierry Charlier/AFP /BELGA