Belgian police ‘failed to press Paris suspect on Brussels bombers’
Le Monde says police accepted Salah Abdeslam’s claim he didn’t know attackers; his fingerprints were found at home rented by Khalid El Barkaoui
Belgian security forces last week failed to press the sole terrorist to survive the November attacks in Paris when he denied knowing the men who days later carried out the suicide bombings in Brussels, the French daily Le Monde reported Friday, according to Reuters.
The report said Salah Abdeslam was shown images of the bombers on March 19, one day after his arrest and three days before they blew themselves up in Brussels airport and a metro station, but he claimed not to recognize them. The investigators never followed up on that denial, the report said. Abdeslam was arrested on March 18 in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, after his fingerprints were found in a March 15 raid on an apartment rented under a false name by Khalid El Bakraoui, one of the Brussels bombers.
El Barkaoui blew himself up on Tuesday morning at Maalbeek metro station, shortly after his older brother Ibrahim and Najim Laachraoui detonated their own explosives at the airport. The attacks killed 31 people and wounded hundreds more.
Investigators quizzing Abdeslam “focused heavily on the events of Nov. 13 in Paris … rather than on future plans,” Reuters reported, citing Le Monde.
Belgian’s federal prosecutor said Friday that Abdeslam has “invoked his right to silence” and not spoken to investigators since a few brief interviews last Saturday, the day after his arrest. According to a Belgian minister, Abdeslam stopped talking to investigators altogether after Tuesday’s bombings.
A statement from the prosecutor Friday said that because Abdeslam was wounded in the leg and needed hospital treatment after his arrest, investigators waited until the following day to question him.
A first round of questioning began at 8:00 am (0700 GMT), lasted two hours and went over the details of the November 13 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead, a statement said.
A second round took place later the same day, with the examining magistrate detailing the grounds of his arrest for about an hour, it said.
The hearing then turned to the European Arrest Warrant issued by the French authorities seeking his extradition to France “but during this last session, Abdeslam invoked his right to silence and has made no further comment,” the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor said investigators saw Abdeslam again on Tuesday, immediately after the bomb attacks on Brussels airport and the metro. On this occasion, Abdeslam “refused to make the slightest declaration,” the statement said.
Belgian Justice minister Koen Geens told parliament earlier Friday that Abdeslam had stopped cooperating with police.
“The federal prosecutor has just informed me that Salah Abdeslam no longer wants to talk since the attacks on Zaventem and the Brussels metro,” Geens told a parliament committee on Friday looking into the attacks.
