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  • Belgian officials knew all about Brussels terror attack gunman — but were unable to stop him

    Belgian officials knew all about Brussels terror attack gunman — but were unable to stop him

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    BRUSSELS — Belgian authorities were well aware of the gunman who caused terror in Brussels — and yet he was still able to shoot two people dead.

    The attacker — who killed two Swedish football fans on Monday evening — had been on the authorities’ radar since 2016 over his alleged jihadist ties, Belgian officials admitted Tuesday. 

    The country’s law enforcement agencies were notified several times that the man was potentially dangerous. He was also living in the country illegally and should have been kicked out following the denial of his request for asylum in 2020.

    Instead, he went on the rampage, managing a night on the run before being shot dead by police on Tuesday morning.

    The gunman lived “below the waterline” only to emerge from his hideout to strike in a “cowardly” fashion late Monday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Tuesday afternoon after a meeting of the country’s National Security Council. 

    The story of the Tunisian-born gunman reveals the shortcomings of the system Belgium created after the massive intelligence failures in the lead-up to the terror attacks that killed hundreds in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016.

    The 45-year-old had no prior convictions but was known to Belgian law enforcement for a range of “suspicious activities,” including suspected human trafficking and threatening the security of the state, Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne told reporters Tuesday during an improvised press conference at the crack of dawn.

    Belgian authorities first got word of the shooter in July 2016 from police in another, unnamed, country that the man had a “radicalized profile” and considered going to “a conflict zone for the jihad,” Van Quickenborne said.

    Yet the killer’s name was never added to the federal terror watch list, which was created to monitor terror-related activities after the 2016 terror attacks on Brussels Airport and a metro station.

    Intelligence failure

    “The information was verified, nothing else could be done,” Van Quickenborne added, arguing intelligence services were at the time swamped with “dozens of reports a day of that nature” as Belgium — and Europe — went through a “true terror crisis.”

    “Although he was known to law enforcement, there was no concrete indication of his radicalization — that’s why he was not on the OCAD [terrorist] watchlist,” the minister said.

    Earlier this year, the Tunisian man was arrested and questioned by police after allegedly threatening a resident at an asylum center who had accused his aggressor of having been convicted of terrorism in his home country.

    This tipped off the Belgian federal police, who called a meeting of an anti-terrorism task force — also created after the 2016 attacks — to investigate him.

    The task force was scheduled to meet on October 17 — but the gunman struck the night before.

    The shooter’s expulsion order also fell between the cracks.

    After being denied asylum in October 2020, he was sent an official letter ordering him to leave Belgium. The letter was sent to his address in the Brussels area of Schaerbeek. 

    But, according to State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole De Moor, the letter was never handed over because he wasn’t home at the time of delivery.

    Belgian federal lawmakers will on Wednesday grill the country’s top ministers on how an illegal resident being watched from multiple sides could still carry out a terror attack. Details of the gunman’s profile are set to spark a fiery debate.

    Belgium has long struggled to fight the image that its multi-layered political architecture — often referred to as an “institutional lasagna” — prevents it from efficiently dealing with security threats. 

    “We need to put the puzzle together: what did the police know?” Tim Vandeput, a lawmaker for Open VLD, the liberal party led by Prime Minister De Croo, told POLITICO ahead of the hearing. 

    It also puts the spotlight on migration policy, in a country where a far-right party — the anti-immigration Vlaams Belang — tops the polls.

    “The return policy is too lax, this procedure has to be water-tight,” Vandeput added.

    Vlaams Belang also lashed out that the Tunisian gunman was “left alone” after he was denied asylum.

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    Pieter Haeck and Nicolas Camut

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  • Survivors of Brussels suicide attacks seek closure at trial

    Survivors of Brussels suicide attacks seek closure at trial

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    BRUSSELS — Jaana Mettala was six months pregnant and on her way to work when the bomb exploded in the heart of Brussels’ European Union quarter. She suffered severe burns, but Mettala and her baby survived — 32 other people did not.

    It’s now more than six years since the deadliest peacetime attacks on Belgian soil. And Mettala yearns for closure as the trial of 10 men accused over the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and an underground metro station starts in earnest Monday.

    “I hope that the trial ends with a fair result and we can put this behind us,” Mettala said. “Even if there are after-effects that we will keep forever.”

    She is going to testify at the trial — which will be the biggest in Belgium’s judicial history with hundreds of plaintiffs. It is expected to last between six and nine months.

    The 10 defendants face charges including murder, attempted murder and membership, or participation in the acts of a terrorist group, over the morning rush hour attacks at Belgium’s main airport and on the central commuter line on March, 22, 2016.

    If convicted, some of them could face up to 30 years in prison.

    Among the accused is Salah Abdeslam — the only survivor among the Islamic State extremists who in 2015 struck the Bataclan theater in Paris, city cafes and France’s national stadium. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole over the atrocities in the French capital.

    He will be joined in the dock by his childhood friend, Mohamed Abrini, who walked away from Brussels’ Zaventem airport after his explosives failed to detonate.

    Abrini has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 22 years for charges including complicity to terrorist murder in the Paris attacks trial.

    Oussama Atar, who has been identified as a possible organizer of the deadly attacks on both Paris and Brussels, will be tried in absentia. He is believed to have died in the Islamic State’s final months of fighting in Iraq and Syria.

    Mettala hopes that facing most of the accused will help her leave behind the anguish.

    “It’s a step on the path toward another kind of serenity,” she said. “It will be very, very hard. But I’m not someone trying to avoid difficulty. Because you need confrontation to get stronger.”

    In addition to the 32 people who died in Brussels, some 900 were hurt or suffered mental trauma.

    Frederic — who asked to be identified only by his first name — was in the metro when the bomb went off. He said he was only slightly injured in the leg. But what he saw that day in the carriage where the device exploded keeps haunting him.

    “I’ll skip the macabre details,” he said. “These are the details that remain and that are hard to get rid of. This trial will be for me the possibility to heal, to go through the grief process.”

    When the bomb went off at the Maelbeek station at 9:11 a.m., Mettala was on the platform. She was badly hurt but did not lose consciousness. She sustained serious burn injuries to her face, legs and hands and was taken to the emergency room of a Brussels hospital where she was prepared for urgent surgery.

    She only woke up a couple of days later. Mettala was then transferred to a intensive care unit in another hospital in the nearby town of Louvain.

    “That’s when I realized that I could have died,” she recalled. “I did not think about it when (the attack) happened. I only thought about the baby in my belly. I did not think about my injuries, I was only focused on reaching the hospital to find out whether the baby was doing fine.”

    She and her newborn daughter were released from the hospital four months later.

    “She is 6 1/2 years old now. She is healthy.” Mettala said. “She knows I was injured when she was in my belly. And I always told her it’s she who gave me the strength.”

    The trial at NATO’s former headquarters was initially expected to start in October but was pushed back to allow sufficient time to replace individual glass boxes where the defendants were expected to sit. After defense lawyers argued that they could not consult with their clients and that the boxes make them look like animals in a cage, they have been replaced by one large cubicle shared by the defendants.

    The new set-up has been welcomed by lawyers with Life4Brussels, a group supporting victims.

    “The defendants were talking to each other (during the jury selection), it’s not a bad thing since it is extremely important for the victims that they are in good condition to explain, to address the court, and answer questions,” said Maryse Alié, a lawyer working with the group.

    Because of the delay, the trial now coincides with the beginning of the festive season.

    “When you have young children, there is a paradox between the ordeal of this trial and the end of year celebrations” Mettala said. “It’s a bit unfortunate that this is happening right now, in the pre-holiday season.”

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