FBI Warned Dutch Police About Extremist Brothers A Week Before Brussels Terror Attacks

FBI Warned Dutch Police About Extremist Brothers A Week Before Brussels Terror Attacks

Dutch police had received an FBI notice that Belgian authorities were looking for the two brothers a week before the pair blew themselves up in the Brussels terror attacks, the Dutch interior minister said on Tuesday.

The Dutch minister claims the information was then relayed to Belgian officials the following day, but Belgian federal police denied the brothers were ever mentioned in the meeting between the two countries on March 17.

The new claims add to the astonishing lapses in security and intelligence after it was reported Ibrahim El Bakraoui was arrested in southern Turkey and deported to the Netherlands on the suspicion he had slipped across the border to Syria to join ISIS.

Dutch Minister of Security and Justice Ard van der Steur clarified the FBI's warnings while Belgian officials face mounting criticism over their counter-terrorism efforts.

Ibrahim and another bomber Najim Laachraoui set off suicide vests and suitcases filled with explosives at the airport on March 22.

They were accompanied by the 'Man in White' who abandoned his suicide mission and fled the terminal when his nail-shrouded bomb failed to explode.

Just 79 minutes later, Ibrahim's brother Khalid El Bakraoui detonated his suicide vest on a Brussels Metro train at Maelbeek station.

The terror attacks killed a total of 32, in a revised count that was previously at 35 because officials had counted three people with dual nationalities twice.

A series of missteps and blunders by Belgium's security and intelligence agencies have come to light since the attacks, as well weaknesses in communication between intelligence agencies across Europe.

Dutch Minister Ard Van der Steur wrote that authorities in the Netherlands had received an FBI report on March 16 stating that Ibrahim was sought by the Belgian authorities for 'his criminal background', while Khalid was wanted for 'terrorism, extremism and recruitment'.

'On March 16, the FBI informed Dutch police over the fact that both brothers were sought by Belgian authorities,' the minister wrote.

In an earlier version of the letter, the minister wrote that the FBI had informed the Dutch authorities of the two brothers, without mentioning that they were wanted by Belgium.

This information was then shared at a meeting between Belgian and Dutch authorities on March 17, the minister wrote.

He also confirmed that Ibrahim was on a US watch list on September 25, 2015, France24.com reported.

But in a statement released in response to his letter, the Belgian federal police denied the brothers were mentioned in a discussion on March 17, when a Dutch police representative visited them.

They discussed a shootout in Brussels on March 15 in which an Islamist gunman was shot dead, but there was no mention of the FBI report, the Belgian police said in the statement.