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Images of Belgian Premier’s Office Found on Laptop Linked to Brussels Attacks Frenchman Plotting ‘Imminent’ Attack Is Charged With Terrorism
(about 4 hours later)
BRUSSELS — A file with the floor plan and photographs of the office of the Belgian prime minister was found on a laptop computer discarded in a garbage can last week by one of the terrorists linked to the Brussels attacks, a government official said on Wednesday. PARIS — A suspected Islamic State operative who was arrested last week had amassed a trove of guns and bomb-making equipment, including the type of explosive used in terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, the French authorities announced on Wednesday, reinforcing fears that militants are planning additional assaults on Europe.
The computer was found during a raid on Rue Max Roos in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels several hours after the attacks on March 22. The operative, Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman, was arrested on Thursday afternoon in Boulogne-Billancourt, a western suburb of Paris. That evening, the authorities raided a fourth-floor apartment Mr. Kriket had rented under a fake name in Argenteuil, a northwestern suburb that was once a popular weekend getaway and a subject for Impressionist painters like Monet and Renoir.
Several Belgian newspapers, including L’Écho, De Tijd and De Morgen, reported that the information about the prime minister’s office, on Rue de la Loi, the site of regular meetings by cabinet ministers, had been found on the laptop. Inside the apartment, the authorities found “an arsenal of weapons and explosives of an unprecedented size,” which led them to believe Mr. Kriket had been planning an “imminent attack,” the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said at a news conference on Wednesday evening, describing for the first time the scope of the plot.
A Belgian official familiar with the investigation confirmed those reports on Wednesday, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The arsenal included explosive materials — among them TATP, which was used in suicide bombs that were set off in Paris on Nov. 13 and in Brussels on March 22 — along with Kalashnikov assault rifles, a submachine gun, pistols, ammunition, four boxes containing thousands of small steel balls, stolen French passports, brand-new mobile phones, a tear-gas canister, and two computers with instructions on how to produce explosives.
On the same computer, investigators found a statement — described by the authorities as a will — by Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of three suicide bombers who carried out the attacks. In that statement, Mr. Bakraoui described himself as increasingly desperate and fearful of ending up in prison. A judge who focuses on terrorism cases charged Mr. Kriket on Wednesday with terrorist conspiracy, possession of weapons and explosives, and falsification of documents, among other offenses, Mr. Molins said.
Mr. Bakraoui and another man, Najim Laachraoui, blew themselves up at Brussels Airport, and Mr. Bakraoui’s younger brother, Khalid, detonated a suicide bomb at the Maelbeek station. Mr. Kriket had an extensive criminal record and had been convicted multiple times of robbery, possession of stolen goods and acts of violence, Mr. Molins added.
The authorities are seeking a third airport attacker, a man seen on surveillance footage wearing a white jacket. They are also, according to Belgian news reports, looking for another person involved in the subway blast. More recently, according to court records, Mr. Kriket raised money for a network of militants in 2012 and 2013. He and an accomplice, Anis Bahri, 32, are believed to have visited Syria between late 2014 and early 2015, Mr. Molins said. After returning to Europe, he said, they traveled back and forth among France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The toll from the attacks at Brussels Airport and the Maelbeek subway station was revised downward on Tuesday, to 32 from 35, as the authorities finished identifying the victims. On July 29, a Belgian court convicted Mr. Kriket in absentia of financing a jihadist recruitment network with proceeds from robberies and other crimes. Named in the same proceeding was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the chief on-the-ground planner of the Paris attacks.
Local news reports said the discarded computer also contained precise information about the prime minister’s residence, which is known as the Lambermont and is steps from the United States Embassy. Secretary of State John Kerry met Prime Minister Charles Michel at the residence on Friday. Mr. Molins said that investigators had not uncovered a specific target or date for the planned attack and were trying to identify other accomplices. Under questioning, he said, Mr. Kriket denied being a terrorist, said that he had rented the Argenteuil apartment on behalf of someone else whom he would not name, and said that the unnamed man and an accomplice were the bomb makers.
L’Écho reported that Mr. Michel had been informed about the findings, that security around the office had been reinforced, and that the United States had been asked to help analyze and decrypt information on the computer. Three men have been held in other countries on suspicion of working with Mr. Kriket. One is Mr. Bahri, whom the Dutch police arrested in the port city of Rotterdam on Sunday at the request of the French authorities. The other two are Algerian men who were arrested in Brussels on Friday: Abderahmane Ameroud, 38, and a man identified only as Rabah M., 34. (He was previously identified as Rabah N. and Salah A.)
On Wednesday, the Dutch minister of security and justice, Ard van der Steur, said that the intelligence division of the New York Police Department had warned the Dutch government, via the embassy in Washington, on March 16 that the Bakraoui brothers had links to terrorism. Mr. Ameroud had been convicted of providing logistical support to two Tunisian suicide bombers who assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, an Afghan opposition leader who was killed two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. In 2005, Mr. Ameroud was found guilty of complicity in Mr. Massoud’s murder.
Mr. van der Steur had said that the warning had come from the F.B.I., but in a statement on Wednesday, he acknowledged that he had erred in testimony before the Dutch Parliament. Mr. Ameroud was also linked to an Afghan and Pakistani network that was suspected of training would-be jihadists in a forest close to Fontainebleau, near Paris, and in the French Alps. He was convicted of participation in a terrorist enterprise in 2007 and was thought to have been deported to Algeria after serving his sentence.
It was not clear how the police in New York had become aware of the Bakraoui brothers, or why they had relayed the information to the Dutch authorities. On Wednesday, a court in Brussels delayed proceedings against him and Rabah M. to April 7, at the request of their lawyers.
News outlets in the Netherlands have reported that the government there passed the warning on to the Belgians on March 17, one day after receiving it. Also on Wednesday, a government official said that a file with the floor plan and photographs of the office of the Belgian prime minister had been found on a laptop computer discarded in a garbage can last week by one of the terrorists linked to the Brussels attacks. The computer was found during a raid in the Schaerbeek neighborhood hours after the attacks.
The Turkish government arrested Ibrahim el-Bakraoui near the Turkish border with Syria in June. Officials there alerted the Belgian government, and then deported him to the Netherlands at his request. Several Belgian newspapers, including L’Echo, De Tijd and De Morgen, reported that the information about the prime minister’s office, the site of regular meetings of cabinet ministers, had been found on the laptop. A Belgian official familiar with the investigation confirmed those reports on Wednesday, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Bakraoui brothers had extensive criminal records. Ibrahim received parole in October 2014 from a nine-year prison sentence for attempted murder; Khalid had a history of carjackings. On the same computer, investigators found a statement, described by the authorities as a will, by Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of three suicide bombers who carried out the attacks. In that statement, Mr. Bakraoui described himself as increasingly desperate and fearful of ending up in prison.
Whether the Dutch and Belgian authorities sufficiently appreciated the gravity of the threat posed by the Bakraoui brothers is one of many strands that lawmakers and intelligence agencies are reviewing in the aftermath of the attacks, the worst violence on Belgian soil in decades. He and another man, Najim Laachraoui, blew themselves up at Brussels Airport, and Mr. Bakraoui’s younger brother, Khalid, detonated a suicide bomb at the Maelbeek subway station. The attacks killed 32 people, a lower toll than previously reported, having been revised downward on Tuesday as the authorities finished identifying victims.
One of the most significant strands involves Reda Kriket, who was arrested last week in France and accused of plotting a new terrorist attack. The authorities are seeking a third airport attacker and, according to Belgian news reports, another person involved in the subway blast.
Mr. Kriket, according to court records, raised money for a network of militants in 2012 and 2013 and traveled to Syria in late 2014. Mr. Kriket was well known to the security services in both France and Belgium, and last year he was named in a court proceeding with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the on-the-ground chief planner of the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13. Local news reports said the discarded computer also contained precise information about the prime minister’s residence on Rue de la Loi, which is known as the Lambermont and is steps from the United States Embassy. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Prime Minister Charles Michel at the residence on Friday.
On Wednesday, an investigative judge in Paris who focuses on counterterrorism is expected to place Mr. Kriket under formal investigation, and hand up preliminary charges. At midday, Mr. Kriket was transferred from the headquarters of France’s domestic intelligence agency, in a northwestern suburb of Paris, to the Palais de Justice, the main courthouse in the heart of the capital. European nations have come under increasing scrutiny for their response to terrorism. On Wednesday, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, Lisa O. Monaco, criticized European allies, including France and Belgium, for failing to reduce barriers to the sharing of intelligence among security agencies, as the United States did after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The proceedings are closed to the public, but François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, is expected to speak at a news conference at 7:30 p.m. on Mr. Kriket and the charges against him. Ms. Monaco’s remarks, at a security conference at the University of Texas at Austin, was one of the Obama administration’s sternest rebukes of its European partners since the Paris and Brussels attacks.
In Belgium on Wednesday, a court in Liège extended by one month the detention of a man known only as Abu Bakr A., who was arrested on March 24 and charged with terrorist activities, while a court in Brussels postponed to April 7 proceedings against two Algerians who were arrested on Friday in connection with the French case against Mr. Kriket. “It’s fair to say that they have not had the same reaction that we did after we had 9/11,” which was “to share information amongst ourselves and to get into a position to share it very rapidly with our international partners,” Ms. Monaco said.
The two Algerian men have been identified only as Abderrahmane A., 38, and Rabah M., 34 (who has previously been identified by the authorities as Rabah N. and Salah A.). Hours before Ms. Monaco spoke, Ard van der Steur, the Dutch minister for security and justice, said it had been the intelligence division of the New York Police Department, not the F.B.I., that warned the Dutch government on March 16 that the Bakraoui brothers had links to terrorism.
Abderrahmane A., who was shot in the leg during a police raid in Schaerbeek on Friday, has been identified in French news reports as Abderahmane Ameroud. Mr. van der Steur had previously testified before Dutch lawmakers that the warning came from the F.B.I., but in a statement on Wednesday, he said he had misspoken. It was not clear how the police in New York had become aware of the brothers.
According to French court records, Mr. Ameroud was accused of providing logistical support to two Tunisian suicide bombers who assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan opposition leader who was killed two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Turkish government arrested Ibrahim el-Bakraoui near the Turkish border with Syria in June. Officials there alerted the Belgian government and then deported Mr. Bakraoui to the Netherlands at his request.
Mr. Ameroud was convicted of complicity in the murder in 2005. He was also linked to an Afghan and Pakistani network that was suspected of training would-be jihadists in a forest close to Fontainebleau, near Paris, and in the French Alps.
In 2007, Mr. Ameroud, an illegal immigrant from Algeria, was also convicted of being part of a terrorist enterprise. He was believed to have been deported after serving his sentence.