BRUSSELS (AP) — The Latest on the suicide bombings this week in Brussels (all times local):
11:55 p.m.
Belgian prosecutors say six people have been detained in raids around Brussels linked to this week’s attacks on the city’s airport and subway system.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement late Thursday that the arrests were made during raids in central Brussels, Jette and the Schaerbeek neighborhood.
Police found a large stash of explosives and other bomb-making material earlier this week in an apartment in Schaerbeek believed used by the suicide bombers.
Schaerbeek residents described hearing detonations during the police raids. It was unclear whether they were explosions or controlled detonations.
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10:40 p.m.
The younger brother of suspected Brussels suicide bomber Najim Laachraoui said Thursday evening he is sad and overwhelmed over what his sibling had done.
The 20-year-old Mourad Laachraoui told reporters that “I feel bad, that’s all – scared and saddened.” He said the family had no contact with Najim since he left for Syria in 2013.
Najim Laachraoui is also suspected of having made bombs used in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.
His brother described him as “a nice boy- especially intelligent,” who read a lot and practiced the martial art of taekwondo for a while like he does. He described their family as a practicing Muslim household, but said he couldn’t say what put his brother on the path to violent extremism.
He said that “I’m no psychologist, no idea.”
He said the family informed Belgian police when his brother called them about leaving for Syria. He searched in vain for his brother on Facebook, he said, to try to persuade him to come home.
He said the family has not yet been officially informed of Najim Laachraoui’s death as one of the three suspected suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels airport and subway on Tuesday, killing 31 people and wounding 270.
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10:05 p.m.
Singing peace songs, taking selfies and wiping away tears, several hundred people have gathered at a central Brussels plaza to honor those killed in Islamic extremist attacks.
Ashraf, a Moroccan-born Muslim who is proud to call himself a Bruxellois, or a Brussels resident, came to light a candle and take photos of the memorial site with his mother, father, aunt and brother.
“It always happens, that people ask Muslims ‘why do you do this?’ But that is not real Islam,” he said. “We must have more understanding of this.”
Because of the climate of suspicion, and because he wanted to protect his family, Ashraf didn’t want his last name published.
Yet he came to the Place de la Bourse to celebrate this multi-cultural city.
“This is a special country, it is open. I know people of many, dozens of nationalities,” he said. Behind him, flags or symbols from a dozen countries adorned the square.
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8:20 p.m.
European justice and home affairs ministers are calling on the European parliament “as a matter of urgency” to adopt an agreement that would allow authorities to exchange airport passenger data.
The ministers issued a statement of solidarity with Belgium following an emergency meeting. The joint statement condemned the “horrific terrorist acts” on Tuesday in Brussels and described them as “an attack on our open, democratic society.”
The passenger data issue has long disturbed privacy campaigners, and figures large in the debate over security versus liberties. The United States has long pushed for better data sharing, but Europeans have balked over privacy issues.
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8:10 p.m.
Belgium authorities have lowered the terror threat level one notch, but say the situation is “exceptional” and “grave” and that another attack is “likely and possible.”
The head of the terror threat assessment authority, Paul Van Tigchelt, says the imminent nature of the threat has lessened since the attacks on the airport and subway Tuesday.
Nonetheless, he says “the danger has not gone away.”
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7:35 p.m.
The Dutch justice minister has confirmed that one of the Brussels suicide bombers was flown from Turkey to Amsterdam in July, but says that authorities weren’t told why and had no reason to detain him.
In a letter to parliament, Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said Thursday that Ibrahim El Bakraoui was put on a plane from Istanbul to the Dutch capital on July 14, but that Turkish officials didn’t say why and his name wasn’t flagged in any Dutch law enforcement databases.
Van der Steur says that El Bakraoui had a valid Belgian passport when he arrived in Amsterdam “so there was no reason to take any action” at Schiphol Airport.
It wasn’t clear what El Bakraoui did after arriving in the Netherlands.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that El Bakraoui, was caught in June 2015 near Turkey’s border with Syria and deported, at his own request, to the Netherlands, with Ankara warning Dutch and Belgian officials that he was a “foreign terrorist fighter.”
The Dutch version of events appeared to contradict that, with Van der Steur saying that an electronic message from Turkey’s foreign ministry to the Dutch embassy in Ankara gave no information about the reason El Bakraoui and an unidentified German national were put on the flight.
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6:55 p.m.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says France is proposing the creation of a taskforce to help in the fight against fake identities.
Speaking from the sidelines of the of EU justice and security ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Thursday, Cazeneuve acknowledged that more must be done since “Islamic State managed to get fake passports and have established a structure that manufactures fake documents.”
Multiple suspects in Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels and November’s attacks in Paris were found to have used false identities.
Cazeneuve added that a united front needs to be shown also in the fight against arms trafficking, which he called “one of the main causes of the development of terrorist activities.”
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6:45 p.m.
A Brussels court has ordered 16 people to stand trial over an attempted terrorist attack in January 2015 – a plot linked to a man who later orchestrated the Paris attacks.
Belgian counterterrorism forces raided the town of Verviers on Jan. 15, 2015 to foil what was described as a jihadi plot to mount a major and imminent attack, killing two suspects.
The federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement Thursday that 16 people would be sent to trial, including four who are under pre-trial detention.
Among the initial suspects who will not face trial is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected Paris attacks ringleader. He was killed in a police raid days after the Nov. 13 attacks on Paris. Abaaoud was linked to a string of thwarted attacks in France last year as well, and experts believe they were effectively rehearsals for the Paris violence.
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6:45 p.m.
Brussels airport has cancelled flights until at least Monday because of the Brussels attacks.
The long Easter weekend is one of the busiest in the year with at least some 600 flights for 60,000 passengers a day.
Sunday would be the sixth straight day without flights at the airport and airlines have made alternative plans to keep flight cancellations for their passengers to a minimum.
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5:15 p.m.
The Lithuanian president has slammed other European leaders as “too naive” in the face of extremism, saying that tougher measures are needed even if it means sacrificing some human rights.
In the wake of the Belgium attacks, Dalia Grybauskaite said that in the fight against extremist organizations “our reaction must be adequate … (and) the time to complain about human rights has long since passed.”
The Baltic leader was speaking in a local radio interview Thursday before meeting NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow and alliance ambassadors.
Lithuania, an eager NATO partner after nearly five decades of Soviet occupation, was allegedly involved in a secret CIA program, including providing a jail for terror suspects who were flown into the country by the U.S. intelligence agency in 2004-2005.
