The Dutch counter-terrorism service NCTB is investigating claims by both Turkey and Belgium that one of the Zaventum airport suicide bombers had been sent back to the Netherlands last year.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday night that Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been picked up on the Turkish border with Syria last year and that both Belgium and the Netherlands were warned he was ‘a foreign fighter’, broadcaster Nos says.

El Bakraoui was sent to the Netherlands at his own request, after Belgium failed to find any terrorist links, Erdogan is reported to have said. He is then thought to have travelled on to Belgium.

Armed robbery

Belgium’s justice minister, Koen Geens, later confirmed that El Bakraoui, 29, was sent to the Netherlands. He was not known as a terrorist but was on parole for other crimes, Geens is quoted as saying by VRT news.

According to the Standaard newspaper, he had been sentenced to nine years in jail in 2011 for an armed robbery and was released on parole in 2014.

No Dutch minister has yet commented on the claims and inquiries are being referred to the NCTB, Nos says. It, too, has declined comment while trying to establish exactly what happened.

Deportation

Dutch police chief Erik Akerboom told Nos that many questions need to be answered. ‘We need to establish the facts,’ he said. ‘Some people talk about “deportation”, others about him being “sent back”. These are two different things.’

Leiden University professor Edwin Bakker told the NRC that much depends on what information Turkey passed on. ‘If they said “here is a Syria combatant” then a major mistake has been made,’ he said. ‘But I cannot believe in that case that Schiphol would let him go without noticing.’

Lawyer Andre Seebregts, who has represented several Dutch jihadis, told the paper that people are often sent back to the Netherlands and Belgium from Turkey. They are not arrested on their return but are visited by a security service official to find out more about the reasons for their visit, he said.

So far, 31 people are confirmed to have died in the two attacks, and some 300 have been wounded. Three Dutch nationals are missing.