The Wall Street Journal - Suspect in Brussels Attack Had Sympathy for Islamic State
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June 21, 2017. Valentina Pop, Julian E. Barnes.
Man shot dead by soldier tried to use homemade bomb in station.
BRUSSELS—Belgian authorities said Wednesday that a 36-year-old Moroccan man shot dead by a soldier in a Brussels train station tried to use a homemade, nail-packed bomb and had sympathy for Islamic State.
Prosecutors said the suspect in the attack, which caused no casualties, had no previously known links to terrorism and had acted alone. They said chemicals and materials found at his apartment suggested he made the bomb.
The prosecutors said they had indications the suspect had sympathy for Islamic State, but provided no further details.
An official briefed on the investigation identified the suspect as Oussama Zariouh. Other officials, who identified him officially only as O.Z., said he had lived in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek since 2013 and had been investigated for drug-related crimes.
However, officials said that while the man wasn’t considered high-risk by Belgian authorities, he had communicated with other self-radicalized individuals. Those contacts weren’t with people considered dangerous terror suspects, said one official, although U.S. and Belgian intelligence agencies are investigating whether he communicated with other, higher-ranking terror suspects.
Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the prosecutors, declined to comment on any ties to a broader network.
The Brussels attack, by a suspect without previously known ties to extremist groups acting alone and targeting a public space near a tourist area, had echoes of other recent terror attacks in Europe.
Islamic State, U.S. and European officials said, has been emphasizing for the past year and a half that radical jihadists in Europe shouldn’t come to the Middle East to fight, but should instead remain at home and carry out attacks.
Offering new details of the Tuesday night attack, officials said the man entered Brussels Central Station at 8:39 p.m. and approached a group of passengers before grabbing his suitcase, shouting and causing a small explosion.
No one was hurt in the initial blast, but the suitcase caught fire. The man then fled, leaving the suitcase, and ran downstairs, prosecutors said
The abandoned bag exploded in what prosecutors described as a second, more violent blast. The man returned to the hall where the explosion occurred, rushing a soldier and shouted “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is great. The soldier fired several times, killing the suspect, prosecutors said. His body then lay there for hours as the Belgian military bomb squad examined the scene for undetonated explosives.
“It’s clear he wanted to do more damage than he did. He tried to set off the luggage, which exploded a second time, so it could have been much worse,” said Mr. Van Der Sypt.
The man lived in Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood that authorities have said is where a number of terrorists connected to the Paris and Belgium attacks were based. Police raided the man’s home last night, officials said, and other searches were conducted in Molenbeek on Wednesday.
Police conducting the raid on Zariouh’s apartment in a small redbrick townhouse carted away a laptop, a phone, a tablet computer and hard drive, witnesses and officials said. Officials briefed on the investigation said such electronic devices could provide more clues about his contacts before the attack.
U.S. officials said they have offered assistance, as is standard practice, in analyzing any electronic devices recovered in the investigation.
Several of the apartments in the building were raided, a bomb squad was on site and police took in at least one resident in for questioning, who was released later.
Mustafa Er, spokesman for Molenbeek town hall said the suspect was self-employed and had come to Belgium in 2002 and lived in other towns before moving to Molenbeek. Neighbors said they didn’t see much of Zariouh.
“He…had a petty criminal past in connection to drugs,” said Annalisa Gadaleta, a local councilor in Molenbeek, who added that the community was now awaiting the result of the investigation and whether Zariouh had connections to other groups.
Ms. Gadaleta highlighted the difficulty of tracking people who self radicalize and aren’t known to authorities.
More than 100 radicalized suspects listed by national authorities live in Molenbeek, although Zariouh wasn’t on that list, said Ms. Gadaleta. Such lists are shared with local authorities.
Ms. Gadaleta said the neighborhood had received reinforcements, with 50 extra policemen since 2015, but that this was insufficient for the scale of the problem. She said 100 more police officer posts are still to be filled.
In the wake of the attack, Interior Minister Jan Jambon praised security forces and said Belgium’s decision to keep its soldiers on street patrols and guarding sites such as the Brussels Central Station had been the right one.
“It’s unfortunate you need certain things, like what happened last night, to prove that certain decisions are the good ones,” Mr. Jambon said.
In a separate interview on RTL radio he said “the services and the military reacted in a very alert way—we have no victims, no wounded, so that shows the security system worked.”
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