Belgian authorities had accurate advance warnings that terrorists planned to launch attacks at the Brussels airport and subway — yet failed to act, according to a report.
Despite the knowledge, the intelligence and security apparatus in Brussels — home to most of the European Union agencies — was limited and ill-prepared to handle the alert, the Israeli Haaretz reported.
The attacks — which claimed more than 30 lives and injured 270 people — were planned by ISIS in its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria, the paper reported.
The terror cell behind Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels was closely tied with the network behind the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, the report said.
Both were apparently part of the same infrastructure, led by Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for and execution of the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam, who hid in Brussels for four months, was collared Friday in a dramatic raid by Belgian authorities.
His arrest and reports that he was cooperating with authorities apparently sparked concerns in ISIS that he would reveal secrets about the terror group’s planned attacks, Haaretz reported.
In other developments Wednesday, Turkey’s prime minister said his country last year arrested one of the Brussels attackers and deported him to the Netherlands, but Belgium ignored warnings that he was a militant.
“One of the Brussels attackers was detained in Gaziantep (in southern Turkey close to the Syrian border) and then deported” to the Netherlands, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters about Ibrahim El Bakraoui.
Turkey said it warned both Belgium and the Netherlands that Ibrahim was a “foreign terrorist fighter.”
Dutch authorities later allowed him to go free because Belgian authorities could not establish any ties to terrorism, an official in the Turkish president’s office said.
Turkey formally notified Belgium of the 29-year-old Belgian national’s deportation on July 14.
The announcement came after authorities said they discovered a cache of explosives in a house and a farewell note from an airport suicide bomber — one of two brothers identified in the attacks.
The brothers were identified as Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, both of whom had extensive criminal records but had not been on watch lists as potential terror threats.
Authorities continued to hunt for a third attacker, the man in a white jacket and dark hat seen in a surveillance image from the airport.
He came to the airport with an explosive in a bag but fled without detonating it — though it later blew up without hurting anybody.
Late Wednesday, authorities identified the man in black on the left side of the image as Najim Laachraoui, 24, a Belgian who made the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks, Le Monde reported.
His DNA was found on explosive materials used in Paris as well as in a Brussels apartment where suicide vests were made, the AP reported.
Ibrahim and Laachraoui attacked the airport in twin blasts separated by 37 seconds, Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.
Ibrahim — seen to Laachraoui’s left in the image — left a rushed will on a computer that authorities found in a trash can in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, Van Leeuw said.
In the note, he expressed his fear of being caught, the prosecutor said.
He wrote: “I don’t know what to do, hunted everywhere, no longer safe” and “I don’t want to end up in a cell next to him,” Van Leeuw said. “I would rather die than end up in a cell,” he wrote.
He appeared to be referring to Abdeslam, who was arrested Friday in a raid in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek where he grew up and which has ties to several of the Paris jihadists.
Khalid, 27, who blew himself up at the Maelbeek subway station, used a false name to rent an apartment in the Forest neighborhood of Brussels, RTBF reported.
Authorities raided the apartment March 15 in an operation that led them to Abdeslam, whose fingerprints were found there.
The prosecutor also said police found 15 kilos (33 pounds) of triacetone triperoxide explosives at the Brussels house from which the suspects in the Brussels attacks left for the airport.
A taxi driver who drove the three suspects to the airport led authorities to the house, where authorities also found 150 liters (40 gallons) of acetone, 30 liters (8 gallons) of oxygenated water, detonators, a suitcase filled with screws and nails, as well as other items.
The Tuesday attacks — for which ISIS claimed responsibility — killed at least 31 people and wounded 270, he said.
Van Leeuw said the unidentified man in the white jacket remained on the loose.
“The third man is on the run; he left his bag with the biggest bomb in it which exploded later because it was so unstable,” Van Leeuw said.
Several people possibly linked to the attacks are still on the loose, authorities said.
Paul Van Tigchelt, head of Belgium’s terrorism threat body, told reporters the country is keeping the terrorism threat level at its highest level until further notice because of the danger of an imminent attack.
In other developments:
- Authorities in the Bahamas say they are investigating whether Khalid El Bakraoui also had Bahamian nationality.
- The suicide bombers at the airport may have tried to target Americans, said US Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, noting that the blast was close to US airline counters. “It looks like it was targeted toward Americans to some degree,” he said, Reuters reported.
- President Obama pledged Wednesday that the United States will target ISIS aggressively and said the world must unite in the fight against terrorism. Obama, who is visiting Argentina after his three-day trip to Cuba, said the US will provide any assistance it can to investigate the Brussels attacks.
- A mix-up by a Brussels taxi dispatcher may have prevented more bloodshed at the city’s airport, Belgium’s DH newspaper reported. The cab company sent a smaller car to pick up the three bombers than the one ordered, forcing them to leave behind the heaviest explosive, which authorities later detonated, Reuters reported.
- An Israeli government official slammed Belgium’s anti-terrorism strategy. Yisrael Katz, the minister of transport, intelligence and atomic energy, said on Israel Radio: “If in Belgium they continue to eat chocolate and enjoy the good life with their liberalism and democracy, and do not understand that some of the Muslims there are planning terror, they will never be able to fight against them.”Joining Katz was former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, who blamed the attacks on Belgians’ “laid-back culture.”“ISIS succeeded in discerning, very well, the soft underbelly of Western Europe … and that is Brussels, Belgium, a country that is ultra-liberal, that exists with no governability,” he said.
Israeli opposition officials denounced the inflammatory language — with Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich tweeting: “The government has devised a system to eradicate terrorism: stop eating chocolate.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday night that he had spoken with the Belgian prime minister and the EU foreign minister. He wished Belgians a speedy recovery to the wounded in the name of the Israeli people.
“I offered them full Israeli assistance in the struggle against terror, intelligence and security assistance,” he said.
- French Prime Minister Manuel Valls urged tougher controls on the EU’s external borders. “We must be able to face the extension of radical Islamism … that spreads in some of our neighborhoods and perverts our youth,” he said.
With Post wires
The chilling moments inside the Brussels airport after the attack: