22/03/2016 Newsnight

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

A harrowing IS attack on Brussels, on the open society it represents,

What can the continent do to thwart these attacks

But it is Europe which has been targeted.

It is the whole world which is concerned with this.

One of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, where most of

Tens of thousands working for the EU and thousands more of course,

Brussels was rocked by three explosions this morning,

killing more than 30 people and injuring 200 or so more.

International terror, attacking the whole concept of an international,

Well, no-one is surprised this has occurred,

given the Brussels connection to the French terror attacks last year,

For a look at the day's events, here's Gabriel Gatehouse.

I am about 300 metres from Maelbeek station.

Behind me is the European Parliament building.

It is eerily quiet on the streets below.

People are gathering tonight at the Place de la Bourse.

People are writing messages in chalk on the ground.

Similar to the scenes we saw in Paris.

There is always an emotional response to these

events and a collective emotional response at that.

As people were dropping off their bags at the American Airlines desk.

These pictures show the scene moments after the blast

ripped through the familiar rituals of international air travel.

One minute before we were there at the place of the explosion.

Vanessa and Xavier were meant to be travelling to Miami for a holiday

They ran out in a panic with everybody else.

The attackers had planned a third explosion.

But by then, the departure lounge was littered with bodies.

The two explosions at the airport came at around 8am.

Then just over an hour later, 11 minutes past 9am, another attack.

This time on a Metro train in the heart of the European quarter.

Passengers were evacuated along the smoke-filled tunnels

The bomb had exploded on the train up ahead in

the middle carriage of a three car train, killing around 20 people.

Above ground, a huge security operation began.

People working in nearby offices rushed out to find what had happened

People just covering them with towels and sheets.

She was just sat on the floor, crying.

In what was a very chaotic adrenaline filled moment, you know,

There was literally horror on the streets of Belgium.

All public transport in the city was shut down.

Outside the headquarters of the European Commission today,

bureaucrats were replaced by soldiers.

If the aim is to paralyse, they have certainly achieved that aim.

This is the heart of Europe, the place where all of the

And look - it is under complete lockdown.

Apart from the police, nobody is going in or coming out.

This was not just an attack on Europe, but perhaps on Nato, too.

This was not just an attack on Europe, but perhaps on Nato, too,

whose planes bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and whose

Police circulated a picture of the attackers at the airport, seen

here pushing trolleys through the airport minutes before the attack.

TRANSLATION: A photograph of three male suspects was taken

Two of them appear to have committed suicide attacks.

The third in a light-coloured jacket and a hat is being searched for.

As police search for the man in the light jacket, the city was

coming to terms with its darkest days since the Second World War.

As in Paris, they responded with a show of unity.

Only last Friday, one of the suspects in the Paris attacks

Many have been waiting nervously for something similar.

For those whose lives were changed for ever today, defiance

Tonight, there are searches ongoing across the country.

Police are Brussels have zoned in on an apartment where they say they

have found an IS flag and another explosive device.

But the hunt for the missing bomber continues.

I am joined by John Crombez, leader of the opposition in the Flemish

parliament and a former minister, and by Beatrice Delvaux, the lead

This is a day nobody will ever forget.

Very rare for the King to express him self like that.

People knew that something like that could happen.

But at the same time we were surprised.

Especially because it was after the victory of the capture

We thought it was the beginning of a solution, but that wasn't the case.

John, the security forces and their role in this, is this something

Belgians feel proud of at the moment, or is there a sense of

The result has gone wrong because Belgium has been hit in a way we

haven't seen before, or since a long time.

We are confronted with networks of terrorists where the intelligence

and the anti-terror units are going to need to be upgraded

in a sense that they need the right instruments, the right number of

people, the right exchange of information that is going to go

Do you think this problem is bigger than Belgium can cope with?

It is disproportionately big in Belgium.

I just wonder if it is one this country needs help with?

What is going to be important is that we don't consider this

Like before when it happened in France, a French problem.

This is where Europe needs to talk about shared intelligence.

That is something that needs to be European.

Europe should be able to manage this together.

You talk about European issues and the international nature

I just wonder whether, this is such an international city, isn't it?

I think it was ranked the second most international after Dubai

in terms of proportion of people born overseas who are living here.

I wonder whether that shapes the response here,

and shapes what people feel about the nature of the threat here?

No, I think, basically the Belgians fear what can

We thought that what happened in Charlie Hebdo and

People here are aware that terrorists do travel.

There is this link between the Belgian terrorist

in the French terrorists after what happened in Paris.

It was by French people and people who were born here in Belgium.

But they can travel through the frontiers.

They can travel between the countries because there was not

enough exchange of information between the two countries.

Salah Abdeslam was able to cross the border after the Bataclan.

The French police didn't identify him.

It wasn't that the French did anything wrong, or the French or the

Belgian police, but if they don't work together it won't be solved.

We have already started, in this conversation,

having a small inquest into things which may have gone wrong.

This possibly isn't the days of this inquest, is it?

This is not the day for those kinds of difficult questions.

Belgium has been hit by something so big.

It hasn't been hit by something like this in decades.

If we can manage this, we are going to have to manage this together.

This is no time for politics in finding oppositions,

People need to be aware of the fact that we can overcome this,

we are going to need to do this together.

We often think of Belgium as a country divided between French

We joke about how long it takes to form a government in Belgium.

I just wonder whether this is one of those psychological or physical

shocks to a nation which, in a sense, develops deeper spirit,

I would like to be as optimistic as you are.

Like any other country, after few days, you have to go back.

After the Charlie Hebdo, you know one political party,

one Flemish, during two or three days there was a sense of union

After that, the Flemish nationalist party issued

a statement saying that it was the fault of the French Socialists,

of the Islamic behaviour, or the fact that they were sympathetic

I think today is maybe not the day to ask questions.

Months ago, we had success against terrorism.

In the South of France, we arrested people before and killed them before

At the same time, we think we can handle this, but

then at the same time, this happened today and we just ask questions.

We won't stop asking them because of some union that has to be here

Let's finish by asking, lifestyle changes...

There are countries like Israel where security is embedded

It's something everybody does because they have been used more

of these kinds of events than most of us in Europe.

Do you think Belgians, or other Europeans, are ready to

significantly change lifestyles to put security as a higher priority?

No, and I would say the reaction today is quite strong

already, that people are saying, we will not hand our country over

We don't need that overcome this, but we are going to need to be very

strong and improve on security to do that.

We can only say we will survive this as a society,

we need to make security stronger, information stronger.

Solidarity is one of the features in these ghastly days.

Everybody declaring themselves to be at one with

There has been a particularly strong degree of solidarity

between the French and Belgians in recent months, both victims

There was solidarity in lights tonight, with the Eiffel Tower

But that has been tension between those two countries,

Belgium bridling at some of the criticism it faced losing control of

that district of Molenbeek, and any tension between Belgium and France

points to a bigger problem, that Europe talks about solidarity,

but exhibits too little of it when it comes to security cooperation.

So we are going to spend the next few minutes thinking

about different aspects of the threat and how to deal with it.

This looks like a pretty catastrophic failure

What do our security services say about this?

There have been persistent reports that Belgian intelligence has been

swamped by the caseload, and that is not coming from British security

And the numbers would seem to back that up.

350 jihadis from Belgium have travelled to Syria to fight

In terms of per capita population, that is the biggest problem

I spoke to counterterrorism sources here today, and they were reluctant

to criticise their Belgian counterterrorist counterparts here

today, but they did say that some don't have sufficiently close enough

relationships with police, and I spoke to a former French

government minister tonight, and he told me there is

And to look at this, you really have to consider one fact.

After the Paris attacks, they were hunting for Salah Abdeslam,

and it took them four months to find him, and he was hiding in plain

And given the nature of the targets today, it was

an airport, but it was landside, not air side, so no security.

What's to security people think you can do about those kinds of targets

Protecting a soft target is the key, clearly, and I have been speaking to

security experts today talking about a rather controversial technique

called behavioural analysis, and this basically means putting

plainclothes people into locations where they can watch passengers

before they pass through security, before they mount planes and trains,

and this is what one security expert had to say to me today.

Behavioural analysis is all about identifying somebody was

negative intent, it doesn't matter whether it is a passenger,

I have long advocated that this should either

primary method of screening at airports, in the UK and worldwide,

and there has been so much resistance over the years because

people feel that we are going to be racially profiling people

rather than making intelligent decisions based on common sense.

Richard Watson, thank you very much indeed.

We can't be tough on terror or the causes

of terror without understanding the things that make it flourish.

To understand those things by the way is not to justify them

And sadly, fairly or not, it's the Brussels district

of Molenbeek that often comes up as exhibit number one, of community

Secunder Kermani has been spending time in Molenbeek, he's

been making a Panorama programme that will air tomorrow night.

And it isn't just Molenbeek that is the focus

Yes, we have seen raids in a district

called Schaerbeek, about 15 minutes from Molenbeek, both of these areas

They are in a geographical semicircle of deprived areas

around a central canal in Brussels, and we have seen people look

at Molenbeek as the centre of radicalisation, but it is not as

The Paris attackers, they came from Molenbeek but they

also had a safe house in Schaerbeek where they manufactured suicide

belts, and we don't know what connection there is between today's

We see areas outside of Brussels, Antwerp is also seen significant

numbers of young people go over to Syria.

But with all those caveats, if you want to understand the causes behind

radicalisation in Belgium, Molenbeek is as good a place as any to go,

and I went back there today, as well as of course there being a lot of

sympathy for the victims are today's awful events, there is also

a sense of foreboding about what the events could mean for the community

We don't know if today's attackers came from here, but it has been

the centre of Belgian's problems with radicalisation.

Just last Friday, security services here celebrate

the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the final member of the group that

Many in a support network all grew up in Molenbeek.

Today's attacks have left some here worrying what will be revealed

Belgium has a higher number of jihadi is in Syria per capita than

anywhere else in Europe, and for the past few weeks, I have been spending

One reason many in the Muslim community here and is that when the

Syrian conflict started, authorities didn't seem overly concerned

Molenbeek has 40% youth unemployment.

There are a lot of disaffected young men here, and some are

This Sheikh used to be one of Molenbeek's most well-known

preachers, but is now in Syria with a rebel group fighting against both

In Molenbeek, many labelled him a radical, but unlike a new generation

of IS jihadists, he says he is firmly against attacks in the West.

I asked him why he thought so many young people from

For some, this solution to the threat to IS lies

For others, it lies closer to home, but whatever the solutions are,

they are already too late for today's victims.

For many of us, this has been the driest spell of weather since last

autumn. It is because the jet stream, the thing that