Iranian radiation student held in Brussels bomb false alarm

A language mix-up with an Iranian radiation student triggered a five-hour bomb alert on Wednesday in central Brussels before police detained the man for questioning, police and officials said. Police backed by bomb disposal teams cordoned off part of the Belgian capital where they surrounded the man, who aroused suspicion because he was wearing a long winter jacket with wires protruding from it on a hot day. But Ghent University said he was in fact a student carrying equipment to compare radiation levels in the city and the countryside who was unable to answer police questions because he did not speak French or Flemish, which are Belgium's languages. The apparent false alarm came as Brussels was on high alert ahead of Belgian national day celebrations and following the Islamic State group's bomb attacks on the airport and metro in March. 'When the bomb disposal robot moved towards the person under surveillance he made some very worrying statements that led us to fear that he had explosives on him,' Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck told RTL-TVI television. 'He was a student who was going to do his studies in radiation. So all the belongings he had on him, which were very suspect, were in fact harmless.' A spokesman for Ghent University said he had been carrying a special 'prototype' of wearable equipment to measure background radiation. 'This instrument takes the form of a jacket containing cables and batteries, which was considered suspect,' the spokesman told Belga news agency. The university said the student was Iranian and spoke fluent English but could not answer questions in French or Flemish. He also failed to immediately show police a document confirming his research. Photographs in local media showed the man on his knees at gunpoint.