BRUSSELS – Heavily armed police and soldiers patrolled key intersections, subways were closed and many stores shut their doors in Belgium’s capital Saturday as the government warned of a threat of Paris-style attacks. At least one suspect from the deadly Paris attacks is at large and was last seen crossing into Belgium.
Prime Minister Charles Michel said the decision to raise the threat alert to the highest level was taken “based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris ... where several individuals with arms and explosives launch actions, perhaps even in several places at the same time.”
The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s office said Saturday several weapons were discovered during the search of the home of one of three people arrested in connection with the Paris attacks, but said no explosives were found.
Authorities across Europe, the Mideast and in Washington are trying to determine how a network of primarily French and Belgian attackers with links to Islamic extremists in Syria plotted and carried out the deadliest violence in France in decades – and how many may still be on the run.
A new potential link emerged Saturday in Turkey, where authorities said they detained a 26-year-old Belgian suspected of connections to Islamic extremists – and possibly to the Paris attacks. The private Dogan news agency identified him as Ahmet Dahmani and said he is suspected of having explored areas in Paris that were targeted in the attacks.
Belgium’s national Crisis Center has raised its terrorism alert for the Brussels region to Level 4, which indicates a “serious and immediate threat.” Belgium’s special security Cabinet held an emergency meeting Saturday morning.
Brussels was the home of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected organizer of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, and Belgium has filed charges of “participation in terrorist attacks and participation in the activities of a terrorist organization” against three suspects relating to the Paris attacks.
At least one Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, crossed into Belgium the morning after the attacks. A Paris police official and the Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday they had no firm information about Abdeslam’s whereabouts, including whether he was in the Brussels area.
Paris attacks rooted in Brussels brings the question: Why?
BRUSSELS – The family homes of the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks and one of the suicide bombers stand only a few blocks apart in the Belgian capital’s Molenbeek neighborhood. After a string of attacks in recent years linked to its grimy streets in central Brussels, a key question arises: Why Belgium?
The tiny nation renowned for beer, chocolates and the comic book hero Tintin is now suddenly infamous for Islamic extremism – and the easy availability of illegal weapons.
Belgium has a central location in Europe; few border controls; a common language with prime jihadi target France; and a political divide between French and Dutch speakers that has long created bureaucratic disarray in justice and security.
From the prime minister down, there is widespread acknowledgment of a complicated and disjointed national structure that hampers the fight against extremism. “We have to do more and we have to do better,” Prime Minister Charles Michel told legislators on Thursday, as he announced a slew of fresh measures to fight Islamic extremism.
For years, there have been calls for more funds to boost the ranks of judges and police, but progress has been slow as rival political camps bickered and austerity measures set in. Meanwhile, the splintering of municipal authority in Brussels and judicial authority nationwide means there’s little sense of who’s in charge of what in security matters.
Add to that a system in which policemen are often blocked from crossing borders – lacking jurisdiction to work in neighboring countries – while criminals can take advantage of Europe’s open border policy, and it becomes clear why Belgium is attractive for terrorists.
“They do shop around for locations where it’s easier to be unnoticed, or that your opponents will lose your trail,” said Edwin Bakker, director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at Leiden University.
Perched over Brussels stands the massive Palace of Justice, once a shining monument to democratic values, now cloaked for decades in scaffolding so decrepit it has come to symbolize Belgium’s neglect for law and order. From there, one can look out onto the Midi, a grimy neighborhood that has become a treasure trove for any criminal looking for illegal arms.
Until 2006, Belgium had a very permissive gun law by European standards, and many weapons used in the 1990s Balkan wars easily found their way into the Belgian criminal underworld. At the same time, the Justice Ministry was hurt by austerity measures, rendering it powerless to dig into the root causes of the problem.
“It is relatively easy to get your hands on heavy arms in Brussels,” said Brice De Ruyver, a professor of criminology at Ghent University, who was security adviser to the prime minister from 2000 to 2008. “That applies to terror and serious crime. That is because the illegal arms trade has been neglected far too long. ... And once you have a reputation, it is tough to get rid of it.”
Lorne Cook contributed to this article
