23/03/2016 Newsnight

Brussels is a city of security today. The search for remaining

perpetrators. And sadness. We are here at the Place de la Bourse, with

Brussels trying to recover. Will ask if it is fair to blame Belgium for

security failure is given the number of other cities that have ensured

this kind of terror. Will Brexit make us

safer from terror - We'll ask the Defence

Secretary Michael Fallon, Europhile Lord Falconer

and sceptic Daniel Hannan. And France's most renowned living

philosopher Bernard Henri Levi. It is continental, a continental

state of emergency. Europe is now living in a state of emergency. Not

only France. It is not only war, it is general war.

A day in which the saddest stories begin to emerge,

as we start putting names, faces, personalities to the numbers we have

been reporting - the fatalities of yesterday's attacks.

Alongside that, of course the hunt for the guilty goes on,

and the attempt to clarify who was involved.

There's been some confusion but we know the names of two suicide

brothers, - yes, another pair of terrorist siblings,

In this case, one who killed himself at the airport,

the other on the metro.

Meanwhile Belgium has been in mourning today, the first

Brussels is not back to normal, it lacks a lot of its bustle,

but it does at least have buses again, and much of the metro

is working too, so it is getting back to business.

The city is itself a target of course -

the city way of life makes us vulnerable to attack,

Brussels, one day on. And here of normality. Like other cities, that

have been attacked, it is all about living here, crowding on to buses

and into underground spaces from which it is hard to escape.

Wonderful if everyone respects the rules, awful when they do not. So in

Brussels today, extra security was one of the extra hassles of urban

life. Queues to get into the main station, the Gare Midi, to make room

for bag searches and quick checks. I guess there is nothing else we can

do so we have to accept it and be patient. A heavy police and military

presence, to. Reassuring but also a reminder of what there is to fear.

Hassell, for sure, the danger of crowds, probably, but cities have an

irrepressible ability to recover, and Brussels is no exception. It is

all about safety in numbers. There are just too many individuals who

simply have something they need to do and they force life back into the

public domain. One other feature of Brussels today, collective mourning.

The silence at midday, the Place de la Bourse designated by people power

alone as a physical symbol for collective expression. Can a city

have feelings? I always grown at myself when I find myself asking the

question, what is the mood in Brussels? But it can be, located.

There is a mood in Brussels. -- it can be confiscated. I am very

emotional because I born here. I think it is awful that our democracy

is hurt in that way. Of course, there are questions being asked

today. Is it something innate about cities, or this city, that makes

murderous? Districts like Mullen Beek get overlooked, people go off

the rails and get caught up in the insane and anti-social. Life passes

them by. -- districts like Molenbeek. The challenge is to ease

some of those problems while preserving what is good about

Brussels and dense, urban life. On that theme of cities, you will hear

more about that in the interview with Emily and Bernard Henri Levi

later. I am here at the Place de la Bourse, and the mood is slightly

hard to describe. There have been protests and chanting. Different

groups making a point, some deeply moved and some just renting beer.

And the media satellite wagons have circled the scene. -- just drinking

beer. This is clearly one piece of the story of Brussels right now but

most important, the victims and their families, the painful wait for

news and for some, heartbreaking realisation of loss. That is what

this is all about. And behind the investigation, the authorities

trying to work out who did what and who has got away.

Secunder Kermani has been looking at what we know

The manhunt for the cell behind the attacks in Belgium.

This was one raid in the city's district of Anderlecht.

Belgian media initially reported they had netted Najim Laachraoui,

an IS bomb-maker believed to be on the run.

But it wasn't true and tonight there are reports he was one

The others were two brothers from Brussels, Khalid

One blew himself up at Zaventem airport.

Six years ago, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and two accomplices armed

with assault rifles carried out a robbery at this money exchange.

As they sped off, they were followed by police.

Ibrahim, from his car, fired shots back at officers,

injuring one of them before they were later arrested.

He is just the latest example here of the crossover

between violent criminals and violent jihadis.

It was a flat where the brothers had been staying that was raided

Police found a IS flag and 15 kilograms of home-made

That's around 15 times the total amount used in the Paris attacks.

And they also found evidence to suggest that the men may have

brought forward plans to strike after the arrest

It was during a search of these apartments here that police say

they found a note from one of yesterday's suicide bombers.

In it, apparently he reveals that he knew the authorities

At the same street we have found a written testament by Ibrahim

el-Bakraoui in which he states, in which he said:

"I don't know what to do.

People are looking for me everywhere."

What seems to be emerging is that yesterday's attacks were the work

Khalid el-Bakraoui used a false ID to rent a flat in the Brussels

Two men escaped, possibly Khalid and his brother.

But inside, police found the DNA of Salah Abdeslam,

a key figure in the Paris attacks, who was finally

Back in September last year, Salah Abdeslam was driving a car

stopped on the Austro-Hungarian border.

On Friday, police revealed his real name was Najim Laachraoui.

He is believed to have fought in Syria with Islamic State.

He had rented a safe house used to prepare for the Paris attacks.

His DNA was found on explosive material suggesting he may have

helped them make the suicide belts in Paris and in Brussels.

And it was either him or an accomplice who received a text

message the night of the attacks in Paris reading, "We're off,

we're starting", leading some to believe he helped direct

He's also expected of involvement in yesterday's attacks.

These individuals connected between Brussels and Paris have

relied on very small networks with high levels of loyalties,

sometimes with family support, which explains that it was extremely

hard to track any exchange of information through cellphones

and this explains why they have been able to remain under the radar

The scale of the attacks has renewed scrutiny on Belgian security forces,

despite their success in arresting Salah Abdeslam.

Today, Turkey claimed one of the suicide bombers had been

deported as a terrorism suspect last year but that Belgium had

Tonight, there were calls for better intelligence corporation.

Every country now should bring information about everybody

who is considered dangerous, and bring it to a data file.

In these attacks, in France and Belgium,

it is quite clear that information was not shared enough.

Useful information was not shared enough.

And I insist, I think it is quite necessary now to enforce a European

Today was still very much about the victims.

The Belgian royal family came to pay their respects.

But there are still suspects on the run and many are now asking

whether this was an intelligence failure.

I was talking earlier about the vulnerability and resilience of

cities under attack and I'm pleased to be joined in the square by the

press -- a Professor of urban studies in Brussels, and also a

counsellor from the district of Forest, which was where an attempt

was made to capture Salah Abdeslam last week before he was captured

last Friday. Where do we start? A lot is being thrown at Belgium at

the moment, people criticising its integration, criticising security.

Let's hear a defence of Belgium because actually, we have had a taxi

and lots of other places and it is not just Brussels that has suffered.

I realise the image at the moment and I consider it as a former

minister, and I am very sad at that. Of course we are shocked about what

happened yesterday and we now that we are not naive, we have and just

to give. But Brussels is not only that. Sometimes what I hear abroad

from the international press and also sometimes from the Belgian

press, is that Brussels is only that. Brussels is not that, Brussels

is also a dynamic city, part of Europe of course. But Brussels is

also the place where we put a lot of effort for the renovation of the

city. It is important also for the citizens, for the young people, but

also in what we call the social cohesion between all the different

countries. Actually, Brussels is looking a bit ragged. It is looking

a bit rundown in parts, even quite central parts. Quite untidy. I think

you must visit some parts of Brussels, because it can seem like

that but it is not. It is not like that. You know, there are lot of

networks of solidarity, networks, social networks. Of course, we have

some cultural forces, educational elements that need to work with

young people, and also with parents. We need forces to do that. Eric, you

are an urban expert, Mullen Beek, do you see that as accurate, the way it

has been portrayed? -- Molenbeek. Well, it is a framing that is a

narrow vision. Molenbeek is one of the canal neighbourhoods, or

municipalities. The canal region was the old industrial area. Brussels is

a city that was industrialised rapidly over 20 or 30 years from a

main industrial city to a post-industrial city, becoming the

European capital, an international city. And what happened is that that

area, with popular neighbourhoods, is now an area of unemployed people,

50% of youth unemployment, 30% of our young people living in families

without income, and so we have a jewel city and Molenbeek is a

derelict area as such. -- a dual city. But of course it is not

because you are poor that you become a jihadi. That is still a marginal

phenomenon. And the local economy, there is a network of proximity so

at the same time, it is one of the most solidarity based areas of the

city. Let's talk about some of the things that Belgium is doing wrong.

Evelyn, you said that there were issues, clearly. What do you think

those issues are? There is not one answer, of course. It is not a local

question. It is an international question. It is an international

question and the answer, it is also the question of the relationship

between Europe and also the rest of the world. It is a question of the

threat of arms. What has the arms trade got to do

with it? When you find a Kalashnikov in an apartment... I see, the arms

trade. When you find also Belgian arms in such a country, an Arabic

city, it is a big question also in Belgium, it is the trade of the

arms. And then it is also the collaboration between the different

countries in Europe, between the police of course in Brussels, but

also with the other countries, not only political, but the police

coalition. Should we view what happened in Brussels yesterday as an

attack on the concept of a city in general, or what special Brussels

factors are there? This is an international city, how far should

we think of it as a Brussels thing or a more general thing? It is a

Brussels thing because Brussels is not only the capital of Belgium. I

do not think it is an attack against Belgium, it is an attack against the

capital of Europe, against the headquarters of Nato, against

Brussels as an international hub. It has a continental

influence. In that sense Brussels as a city in general is not the

country. If you ask what are the weaknesses? In fact the Belgian

state is a weak state and Brussels is a very multicultural and

multilingual city. Does it work as a city? The civil society is very

active and networks. Do people respect each other? We have a

national question and back community question for 200 years and 400

people have been killed over these two centuries. If you compare it

with other multicultural cities, people do respect each other and the

Belgians have a long tradition of compromise and arranging things and

that is an example. Where you have a problem is you need investment in

socialising people of such different kinds. My criticism is that for one

year you have seen soldiers in the street and new investment in

policemen, but at the same time a reduction in schools and in fact

what is not done and that is the policy of the government. I agree

completely. The answer to that is not only security. Of course we have

to make the security of the citizen, but it is not only that. That is a

short-term answer. We have to put money, but not only money, but also

a recognition of education and of all these workers, the first level.

We need to leave it there. Thank you both very much indeed. That is our

coverage from Brussels. It is getting towards midnight here, still

plenty of people around. It is a paradox that at this point people

are told to avoid crowds and they reacts to yesterday's event by

creating a crowded space like this. It shows how strong our instinct is

to be together and to cluster at an important time.

So as you heard, Turkey says it warned Brussels about the bomber

and deported him from Turkey as a militant,

a claim the Belgian authorities have denied.

I asked our Defence Secretary Michael Fallon if he trusted

the Belgian authorities and the intelligence

I saw that report but I think it is far too early to start

criticising the Belgian authorities until the

investigation is complete, until we know exactly the movements

The head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, has said

that Isis has got a new, external command forced to transport

Do you recognise that that is where Isis is directing its thoughts now?

Not just London, but the streets of our

Yes, we know that Daesh has an external attack planning

operation that is designed to create mayhem on the streets of Western

cities and London is not exempt from that.

That is why we have to work together to combat it and it is why

we are playing such a key part in the coalition against Isis

And if that hit London, what would be that contingency plan?

David Cameron suggested last November that up to 10,000 military

personnel are available to support the police in dealing with that kind

Is that right, 10,000 military personnel?

Yes, that has been implemented, we have troops

standing by now to back up the armed police.

The armed police are the first response and they are being

increased, so there are now more and please, more visible and railway

stations and airports and a number of armed response vehicles

is being increased in our big cities, so that is in hand.

But as back up to come in behind the armed police we now have

military in reserve and they are able to call on troops,

some 5000 at 24 hours notice, and more

It is glaringly hard to ignore that the EU has not been able

The EU has open borders which we are not

Happily we have control of our own borders,

so we are a different category from that, but we benefit of course,

we have in a way an advantage in both worlds.

We keep control of our borders, but we

benefit because we share the intelligence, the flight

information and the cooperation that there is between security

Not really because when you have got one of the French attackers

whose phone shows he came to Birmingham, that he travelled

It does not make sense that we have control of our borders or not.

It does make sense because it is more difficult to get firearms into

this country. You can travel across Europe and not get your car search

because borders are open. Is the answer more cooperation and union?

Certainly more cooperation. This is not the time for us to be leaving a

partnership like the European Union. On the contrary, we should be

sharing more information with each other. Would you like to see an EU

intelligence agency? A body committed to intelligence with an EU

title? I would like to see what is now happening, which is all the

intelligence agencies and security forces across Europe beginning to

pool more of the information, to help each other and to swap data

about air traffic movements and to make sure everybody can benefit from

it. When people come to you and say, you look at what has happened in

Paris and in Belgium, you look at the fact that we do not, whatever

you may say, entirely trust the security and intelligence services

of other countries within the EU, why would you want to jeopardise the

security of your citizens by leaving as an part of the union when we do

not feel safe in it? We are not jeopardising the safety of our

citizens. Where there is intelligence we can share across

Europe, where we can tap into important information about movement

of terrorists, it makes sense to do so.

So what, if anything, do the attacks in Brussels tell us

And does it make any clearer the answer to the inevitable

question, whether Britain is safer or more exposed with the parameters

Joining me now, Dan Hannan MEP and author of Why Vote Leave,

and Charlie Faulkner Shadow Justice Secretary,

Welcome to you both. Perhaps more than anything else, this idea of

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, who kept us guessing for a long time

about which way she would go, who knows more than anyone about the

frustrations of dealing with EU institutions, has said loud and

clear it would make us more safe if we remain. I was never guessing, it

was always clear which way she should go. I have never ever heard

her say anything other than we should stay in EU. Equally, the

former head of our secret intelligence services has said we

would be safer if we leave the EU. It is important to look at why.

First of all, we would have the power to deport dangerous villains

and we would be outside elements of immigration rules and we would have

more control over who is coming in and leaving. It must be right if we

are safer if we are in control of our own borders. If you can control

what the ECJ does or what we do in terms of who we deport and sent

home, you have got control. It is rubbish because the reason we cannot

deport people is nothing to do with the European Union, it is the

European Convention of human rights that prevents that. Richard Dearlove

who uses that as his main argument is wrong. What about Abu Hamza? That

was the European Union and the reason why it is because the

European Convention on Human Rights. European Convention is an extra

argument. You are wrong. As far as the argument is about why we are

safer in Europe is because we have signed up to a specific number of

European Union instruments would allow us to go into databases on

fingerprints within 24 hours, number plates within five or 15 minutes and

DNA within 15 minutes and we are having that information when people

present themselves at your borders, or when you get DNA from a scene is

a vital piece of evidence. If you are looking at terrorists who are

crossing borders, to go out of the European Union you would have to

leave these arrangements. Anybody who says we are safer outside those

arrangements is talking absolute rubbish. The fingerprint comes under

an odd word which we are meant to be signing up to which would make 143

days to wait for fingerprinting happen in 15 minutes. It is hard to

reject that. First, the alternative to the EU running elements of

criminal justice is not that we do not talk to our immediate allies.

For a long time before the EU there was the Hague Convention, Interpol,

extradition deals, recognition of time spent in prisons, or of that

existed and will continue to exist. Our intelligence sharing will carry

on with our friends in Europe. It must move faster if you are part of

it. We will have the choice on issues like the European arrest

warrant. Iceland this month is debating whether to join the

European arrest warrant. That is the choice for a post-EU democratic

Britain. I hope we do not stay in it because we pay a high price. And we

reject the ones we don't want, why can't we carry on doing that? He is

and we withdraw and then try to re-negotiate. It is rubbish. He says

we can go straight back into extradition arrangements. He will

know that in 1995 a terrorist fled from Paris, came to Britain in 1995

and was extradited under the pre-European arrest warrant

arrangements seven years later. It was after the attempted bombings a

week after 7/7, Hussain Osman, one of the terrorists, was extradited

after two weeks. Would he not have been extradited, the same man who

was caught on camera, running out of the tube station, you are telling me

the Italians would not have extradited him without the European

arrest warrant? I am telling you yes and before the European arrest

warrant extradition is from Italy two years. I was the Secretary of

State for Justice at the time. That is a practical reality of the

European arrest warrant. A constituent of mine who was taken

out of Southampton to seek treatment, his parents were detained

by this awesome instrument that we were told was an anti-terrorism act.

When you put that power in the hands of the authorities, as in his case,

they use it routinely. So you are against it? You would not want us to

rejoin the European arrest warrant outside the EU? What would that

mean? I would not. It would mean we could not extradite terrorists in

weeks and once they manage to get outside Britain it would take years

to get them back in. What do countries who do not have the

European arrest warrant do when there is a very clear case? It takes

years. Is that not right? Yes or no? I had a boy who was celebrating his

A-levels in Greece who spent two years an obviously false charges in

a case of mistaken identity, 11 months in one of the worst prisons

in Europe waiting for his case to come to trial and by the time he was

finally cleared, the guys with whom he had been celebrating his A-levels

had graduated. How do you give that back to a boy of his age? That is

the reality. Are you not creating a bureaucratic nightmare every time

you pull out of a system and have the time you want to readmit

yourself and have the time you do not. The bureaucracy is never

ending. But it is the bureaucracy that is the mess we are in now. It

is like hanging a welcome sign over Europe for terrorists. Going back to

security, do you think we are less secure out of the EU, less secure

out of the EU? Without doubt we would be less secure. Terrorists are

crossing borders to try to attack very many of the European countries.

We need to cooperate. Our borders will not change. No, but we could

enter into these arrangements where there are data sharing arrangements.

We agreed to open our borders to the rest of the EU and it is now clear

that the EU has opened its borders to the entire world. That was not

the original deal and I fail to see how it makes us safer. And we do not

have open borders. As a result of not having open borders, but having

joined in the Schengen information sharing arrangements, we get full

information about people trying to get into our country. The last

question, on the back of a rather explicit text from one of your

labour colleagues, what about this Labour list? You are up here and do

not appear on it, are you core, core plus or neutral or hostile? Today Mr

Iain Duncan Smith had said that the Prime Minister's economic policy was

a total sham, yet Mr Cameron responded by referring to this silly

list and he was able to distract attention from his own failure as a

Prime Minister. In a clear shot, isn't it? --

missing an open goal with a clear shot, isn't it? All Jeremy Corbyn

has to do when the Prime Minister asks about the list, you will see

him wriggling when he is referring to something as trivial as that.

Thank you both for coming in. It's becoming increasingly clear

this kind of terror recognizes no particular target,

no state, no end and no aim. So what tools do we have to fight

what is essentially endless random acts knitted clumsily together

in the name of jihad? I asked the French philosopher

Bernard Henri Levy, who has just returned from the frontline

of Kurdistan, where he's been making It was a symbol with Charlie,

it was a war with Bataclan and it is general war

now with Brussels. Europe is living in

a state of emergency. It is not only a war,

it is a general war. This is the first point

after what happened in Brussels. There is a will in Brussels

to terrorise an entire city, You know, all the fascists

in history, they commit genocide. These fascists, Isis,

they want to commit genocide too, but maybe also, I don't know how

to say it, metro-cide, Because city means civility,

it means citizenship, it means spirit of cosmopolitanism,

a city as itself is a great idea. We always hear people saying,

"We will be brave, we won't be cowed, we'll carry on,"

but underneath all the rhetoric there is fear and people do

change how they live. The only way to wage this battle

I feel is to go to the core, to go to the brain of this war,

the core, the brain, Isis is very different from Al-Qaeda

because they mix the two models, the two patterns, the two paradigms,

the paradigms of terror without state and the paradigms

of terror with a state. They join the two models

and this is their strength. This is why it is a new scale

compared to Al-Qaeda. So there is a so-called Islamic

State. The only way the West has to defeat

them is to hit in their state there. I don't say it will be a miracle

solution, we will still have, like a duck which continues to live

even when he has no head, But if we destroy their

headquarters, if we destroy the training camps, if we destroy

the people who give orders and who planned Brussels,

Paris, yesterday London, hopefully not, maybe tomorrow,

if we destroy the heart, if we destroy the masterplan,

it will be the beginning Many people will remember

you were passionate about aiding When you look at Libya

without Gaddafi does that seem The real comparison to do is Libya

where we English and French intervened, and Syria

where we washed our hands. The country is empty,

millions of refugees, the destabilisation

of Lebanon, of Turkey... But Libya is the next one,

that will be the next part of Isis. Isis was born in Iraq and in Syria,

not in Libya. They are trying to go now in Libya,

but the real core of Isis If in August 2013 the English

Parliament on one side and Barack Obama on the other

side had not stopped the will of David Cameron

to punish Bashar al-Assad, at the moment of the use

of chemical weapons, There would probably not be these

millions of poor people fleeing the war and the misery

and the bombing of the two sides On a personal note, you were

targeted by Belgian extremists. Do you understand why

you became that target? You know, I became a target

like so many people. When you are vocal against these

people, you are inevitably a target. What they cannot stand is somebody

who says that Islam as such is not evil, somebody who says

there is a good Islam, that this good Islam

should be reinforced. This is more intolerable for Isis

probably than the one single-minded redneck who would say

Islam is as itself. Donald Trump is their ally

in a way, intellectually, of these

people of Isis. They would never have an argument

with Donald Trump as a symbol. Isis pleads for the war

of civilisation. The idea of Isis is that Islam

as a bloc should be against the West They try to gather all the Muslims

of the world under their black flag in order to fight the West

as a bloc. There are some people in the West

who say exactly the same thing, that there should be

a bloc against a bloc, an ideological battle between Islam

as such and the West as such. The first risk is to say that jihad

represents all Islam. This is horrible, false

and it is a crime against the spirit But there is a symmetrical force

which is to say that Islamism and jihadism has nothing

to do with Islam. Jihadism with Islam,

it has something to do, This is the question that has to be

addressed to the widest Does it feel as if Europe

is in trouble now? Do you think of it as a continent

or a union in trouble? Europe might be in the

process of dying today. The big mistake of my generation has

been to believe that Europe was done, that it was finished,

that it was inscribed, written in the sense of history

and that whatever happens, Not true, there is no

sense of history. And now there is clearly a collapse

in Europe with Greece, with Brexit, if it happens,

with the crisis of the refugees, with the borders, there

is a collapse in our Europe, which would mean for European people

more unemployment, more But it is a credible

scenario today alas. And you see Brexit

as a part of that? I think Brexit would

be part of that. I am not an economist,

but I know enough. I think it

would not be good for British people and it would not be good for Europe

and it will be one more signal for Europe as a whole

of deconstruction, What would be a Europe

without England? We leave you here in London,

and a gesture of solidarity with the people of Brussels,

as the capital's landmarks light up Good evening. The Easter weekend is

looming large, but there is a change to much more unsettled conditions.

It is pretty