Some in Belgium celebrated after Brussels Islamic terror attacks, says Belgian Interior Minister-Wall St. Journal, 3/29/16

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"In the days following terrorist attacks in Brussels, street celebrations broke out in several places in Belgium, the county’s vice prime minister said." ..."Bombs used in Brussels attacks contained nails." "Some victims have nails in their bodies."

3/29/16, "Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon Says Police Budget Was Cut ‘Too Much’," Wall St. Journal, Matthias Verbergt, Brussels

"The attacks last Tuesday, which left 32 dead and more than 300 injured, have sparked criticism of Belgium’s intelligence and police services, which are overwhelmed by the dozens of counterterrorism operations and investigations.

“For years, we have cut the budgets of these departments way too much,” Interior Minister Jan Jambon said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“I’m pushing for more resources,” Mr. Jambon said. “Each house search yields cellphones, personal computers, hard drives…that need to be verified, and contain other clues. This is a gigantic job.” The Belgian authorities have called on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine laptop hard drives and mobile phones relevant to the case, U.S. and Belgian officials have said.

One day after the attacks, Mr. Jambon offered his resignation to Prime Minister Charles Michel. Mr. Jambon said he was politically responsible for the error of not transferring the information that Turkey had provided on Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the Brussels suicide bombers, who was caught last year near the Syrian border in Turkey.

“But he [Mr. Michel] convinced me to stay,” he said, declining to answer questions directly related to the probe and any alleged errors made....

The day before the attacks in Brussels, federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw said his office opened 315 terrorism cases in 2015 and 60 new cases so far this year.

“This shows the scale of the phenomenon we are confronted with at the moment...especially since it’s becoming or could become violent,” Mr. Van Leeuw said....

After the Paris attacks, the Belgian government announced a €400 million ($448 million) investment in counterterrorism measures, which include significantly increasing counterradicalization efforts in Brussels’s most sensitive neighborhoods.

The plan focuses on eight Brussels districts including Molenbeek, where several of terrorists who participated in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks originated. The Brussels attackers also came from predominantly Muslim neighborhoods in Brussels.

Under the plan, these neighborhoods would receive 300 additional police officers by the end of the year. Local mayors and police unions have said the reinforcements are coming too slowly....

“We are gradually implementing this,” Mr. Jambon said, talking about the additional police officers for Brussels. “We can’t just conjure up 300 police officers out of nothing.”...

Four months ago, the Belgian government also announced other legal measures to fight terrorism more efficiently, such as creating a better database of foreign terrorist fighters and allowing house searches 24 hours a day, and not just between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. as under current law.

Belgium’s parliament is still in the process of making the necessary legal changes needed to put those measures into effect.

“It would have been better if we had done this a year ago,” Mr. Jambon said. “This indeed requires time. But quality should prevail over speed.”...

Mr. Jambon said Belgium’s problems with radical Islam are deeply rooted in society. After last week’s attacks, people in certain parts of Brussels were celebrating, he said. The minister added that during the March 18 police raid in Molenbeek that captured Salah Abdeslam, the last fugitive Paris attacker, several youngsters were filmed throwing stones and bottles at police forces."...

“It is, to me, highly shocking that after Abdelslam’s arrest, 200 young people of foreign origins hurled spontaneously bottles and stones on our police,” (Flemish PM) Bourgeois said. “It is regrettable that we saw nothing of these images on national television news.”

VRT, the Flemish public broadcaster, said it did not report about the incident for technical reasons and not out of a desire to silence it."...

(continuing, WSJ): "“There are important groups of people who turn against our society,” Mr. Jambon said. “That is not very reassuring.”...

Prosecutors say investigators only questioned Mr. Abdeslam for three hours before the attacks in Brussels, sparking criticism that a tougher interrogation might have yielded information on the attacks.

Mr. Jambon rebutted the suggestion. “We will not change the rule of law in this country to be able to interrogate terrorists in a different way,” he said."
 
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3/30/16, "Belgian PM acknowledges street celebrations following Brussels attacks," jta.org, The Hague, Netherlands

"In the days following terrorist attacks in Brussels, street celebrations broke out in several places in Belgium, the county’s vice prime minister said. 
 
Jan Jambon made the statement about the March 22 bombings, which killed 35 people, on Wednesday during a symposium titled “Terrorism, Israel and International Law” and organized by the Dutch anti-racism and pro-Israel lobby group CIDI, or the Center of Information and Documentation on Israel, in The Hague....

"Only one in six jihadists comes from a poor home in Belgium, he (Jambon) said."...

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3/22/16, "Bombs used in Brussels attacks contained nails," NBC News, Brussels, via WKYC

"Three bombs were used in the deadly attack at Brussels Airport, although one of the explosives did not detonate, the governor of Flemish Brabant province said.

All of the bombs contained nails, according to officials at the Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, east of Brussels. The hospital treated 13 of the victims, and officials said most of them suffered fractures, burns and deep cuts caused by metal objects. Five of them were seriously injured. Twin blasts rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport on Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, while another explosion shook a metro station in the Belgian capital.

At least 11 people were killed at the airport, and another 20 at the Maelbeek Metro Station, which was also rocked by a blast less than an hour after the airport attack."..

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"Some victims have nails in their bodies.”

3/22/16, "What Is A Nail Bomb? Brussels Terror Attack Victims' Bodies Were Pelted With Sharp Shrapnel," IB Times, Alex Garofalo

"The assailants in a devastating terrorist attack in Brussels on Tuesday appear to have used nail bombs in the attack, according to reports. The separate attacks left at least 30 people dead and well over 100 wounded from explosions in the city's international airport and at a busy metro station. The terror suspects who launched the attacks were not immediately identified.

Officials said attackers in Belgium used nail bombs Tuesday to maximize pain and destruction. Marc Decramer, a spokesman for the University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, told reporters: “The bomb contained nails to create more victims. Some victims have nails in their bodies.”

Explosive devices packed with nails increase the severity of the bombs' ability to wound targets. The nails act as additional shrapnel, leading to greater loss of life and injury in inhabited areas than an explosive alone. The crude weapons are commonly used by terrorists, especially suicide bombers.

Nail bombs were used in the similar April 2011 subway bombing in Minsk, Belarus, as well as the Boston Marathon bombing in April  2013. In the latter instance, nails were used in the pressure cooker bombs fashioned by brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Brussels metro stations were set to reopen Tuesday at 4 p.m. local time with about 500 soldiers guarding the metro system, according to a tweet by Jacqueline Galant, a Belgian transportation minister."...


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