Belgium commemorates Brussels attacks 10 years on

Belgium marks on Sunday 10 years since the 2016 jihadist bombings in Brussels, a trauma that still scars the country and that authorities say sharpened focus on intelligence and counterterrorism.

The March 22 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group left 32 people dead and more than 300 wounded — Belgium’s worst peacetime massacre.

Remembrance ceremonies will begin around 8:00 am (0700 GMT) at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, continuing an hour later at the Maelbeek metro station, the sites of coordinated suicide blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital.

Christelle Giovannetti, who was injured and “scarred for life” by the scenes she witnessed that morning, has attended every commemoration held since the attacks.

“It’s absolutely essential for me to be there, it’s my place,” she told AFP head of Sunday’s events.

Giovannetti is among a group of survivors scheduled to speak as part of a national tribute organised by the office of Prime Minister Bart De Wever.

Belgium’s King Philippe and Queen Mathilde are also due to attend ceremonies that will culminate at a monument erected in memory of the victims in central Brussels.

The Brussels attacks were the work of the same jihadist cell that struck Paris just months earlier on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.

Having retreated to Brussels safe houses, the jihadists mounted a hastily organised attack in the days after the March 18 arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the Paris attack group.

On March 22, a Tuesday morning, three suicide bombers detonated their explosives, first at Zaventem and then at a packed metro station close to the seat of EU institutions.

– ‘Learnt the right lessons’ –

The commemorations take place as the war in the Middle East has heightened the authorities’ concerns about possible new attacks.

This month, a pre-dawn blast damaged a synagogue in the eastern city of Liege, causing no injuries. Over the border, the Netherlands was later hit by two similar incidents targeting the Jewish community.

In Belgium, the threat level remains “serious” at three on a scale of four, following an October 2023 attack in Brussels that saw a gunman shoot dead two Swedish football fans before being killed by police.

Belgium was criticised for security failings in the run-up to the 2016 bombings, something the head of the country’s OCAM national threat analysis centre, Gert Vercauteren, said he remembers well.

“It’s a feeling of failure that obviously hit us all,” he said in an interview with AFP.

In the aftermath of the bombings, the Belgian government was left reeling.

Two ministers offered their resignations after Turkey said Belgium had ignored warnings from Ankara, which had deported airport bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui in 2015 following his arrest near the Syrian border.

Today, the justice system, police and intelligence services assert they have significantly improved information sharing.

The number of state security service staff has increased from 600 to 950 agents in a decade. “We have learnt the right lessons,” said Vercauteren.

The creation of a shared database on extremist profiles was “a major step forward”, he said.

This database, which all security services, including municipal police forces working with community outreach staff, can access and contribute to, is constantly updated.

Last year, it contained 555 names “under priority monitoring”, 86 percent of whom were flagged for “Islamist extremism”, according to OCAM.

But some victims complain that even 10 years after the attacks, they are still unable to have their physical or psychological injuries recognised, limiting their right to compensation.

This week, Defence Minister Theo Francken admitted to “a serious error” after 14 victims were asked to repay compensation received over the attacks as a result of a mistake by the federal pension service.