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Fears that Brussels bombers were plotting to build a radiological dirty bomb.

Fears grow over radioactive plot as nuclear workers have passes revoked, Business Post BY POST REPORTER ON MARCH 25, 2016 SIX ARRESTS IN BRUSSELS AND FRANCE FOILS SEPARATE TERROR PLOTEleven Belgian nuclear workers have had their work passes revoked amid fears that the Brussels bombers were plotting to build a radiological dirty bomb.

Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, the brothers suspected of suicide strikes on Brussels airport and Metro, are believed to have been involved in an Islamic State plan to create a bomb to scatter radioactive material over a populated area.

A senior Belgian nuclear industry official was secretly filmed by jihadists late last year, according to the country’s nuclear authority. Yesterday the brothers were linked to the surveillance.

An official at the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control told The London Times: “When you start filming someone in the way they did, the logical conclusion is that they wanted to abduct that person and to obtain radioactive material.” A conspiracy to build a dirty bomb, with the aim of contaminating a crowded public space, was “the big question” faced by the authorities, the official added.

About 140 soldiers were guarding Belgium’s two atomic power plants, a nuclear research facility and a company that makes medical isotopes, with two members of the terrorist cell behind Tuesday’s attacks at large last night.

Criticism grew over Belgium’s handling of intelligence before the bombs that killed 31 and left more than 300 injured. Two government ministers offered to resign. However, police raids on flats in Brussels last week — which led to one suspect being shot and others captured — may have disrupted an even larger Paris-style massacre, involving gun attacks, planned to coincide with the bombings.

Since those raids seven workers at the Tihange nuclear power station in eastern Belgium have had their work entry passes withdrawn and a further four passes were revoked after the latest attacks following vetting by a committee including intelligence and security agencies.

The key figure in the alleged dirty bomb plot is Mohammed Bakkali, 28, from Brussels, who was arrested in November on suspicion of helping to plan the Paris massacre. Police raided his wife’s flat and found a ten-hour video taken by a camera hidden opposite the home of an executive at the Centre for the Study of Nuclear Energy in Mol, northern Belgium. The executive had access to radioactive isotopes at the country’s national nuclear research centre…….https://www.businesspost.ie/fears-grow-over-radioactive-plot-as-nuclear-workers-have-passes-revoked/

March 26, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general