BRUSSELS - Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Saturday that a “significant” part of the Muslim population celebrated attacks, blaming the country’s policies for failing to integrate migrants into society.
He did not explicitly refer to last month’s jihadist attacks on Brussels’ airport and metro system that killed 32 people. “A significant section of the Muslim community danced when attacks took place,” Jambon said in an interview with the Flemish-language De Standaard newspaper.
The Belgian minister also accused Muslim residents of Brussels’ largely immigrant Molenbeek neighbourhood of attacking police during an operation last month to arrest a suspect in connection with the deadly attacks in Paris last November.
“They threw stones and bottles at police and press during the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. This is the real problem. Terrorists we can pick up, remove from society. But they are just a boil. Underneath is a cancer that is much more difficult to treat. We can do it, but it won’t be overnight,” he said.
Jambon, whose New Flemish Alliance party has been a key part of Belgium’s ruling centre-right coalition since 2014, previously offered to resign in the wake of the Brussels attacks. In Saturday’s interview he said that the danger linked to the radicalisation of youth from third and fourth generation families is “too deeply rooted” in some areas because Belgium “have for many years ignored the warning signs”.
Following the November 13 attacks in neighbouring France, Jambon sparked controversy when he promised to “clean Molenbeek” when it emerged that several of the attackers had links to the impoverished district of the Belgian capital.
Brussels airport will fully re-open in June, its chief executive said, after suffering extensive damage when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the departures hall last month killing 16. “We will be 100 percent operational again in June,” Brussels airport chief executive Arnaud Feist told Belgian newspaper Le Soir published Saturday. “But it will be a basic service, the facilities will not be fully renovated. We will reflect on the terminal’s future and therefore probably won’t restore it identically.
“Starting in May we are going to open 100 check-in counters in the part of the departures hall that was least damaged, which will permit us to increase our capacity to 70 percent and give us more flexibility.” The damage from the double blasts on March 22 was severe, with pictures from the scene showing the building’s shattered glass-fronted facade, collapsed ceilings and destroyed check-in desks.
The airport was completely closed to passengers for 12 days following the attack. The airport was only able to reopen partially thanks to two large white tents that served as temporary check-in facilities, initially allowing 20 percent of flights to operate as normal. Security inside the tents was tight with passengers required to walk through metal detectors and have their bags screened before checking in and being allowed to enter the main building.
Brussels airport, which claims to contribute some three billion euros ($3.4 billion) annually to the Belgian economy, has not released any figures on the economic impact of the shutdown. But Brussels Airlines, the national flag carrier, said it was losing five million euros daily following the blasts.
“We have nearly 20,000 passengers departing each day, instead of the normal 40,000,” said Feist. As well as the airport blasts, the Brussels metro was also attacked. A total of 32 people were killed in the coordinated attacks.