PARIS — The authorities in Belgium have said that one of the Paris attackers may have been holed up in a house in Brussels two nights after 130 people were killed and hundreds more injured — but that he could have escaped because of a law banning police raids on private homes from 9pm to 5am, according to the country’s Justice Minister, Koen Geens.

The revelation by Mr Geens that the suspect, France’s most wanted man — Salah Abdeslam (picture) — might have gotten away because of an arcane law intended to safeguard family privacy only adds to the picture of a severely dysfunctional and ineffective government in Belgium.

The Minister said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday night (yesterday morning, Singapore time) by the Dutch-language television station VTM that Abdeslam would have been caught if he were there, and a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office acknowledged in a telephone interview that “the immediate surroundings and the streets surrounding the property were not sealed off during the night”. “All we know is that we had good reasons to believe that Salah Abdeslam was in the house that night, and that the next morning the raid was negative,” said Mr Eric Van der Sijpt, spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor in Brussels, who is leading the investigation.

Since the attacks, Abdeslam has managed to evade a widespread manhunt. The new revelation adds to the list of apparent missed opportunities to seize him, shared by both Belgian and French authorities. Though officials did not explain why they believed he may have been in the house, the Belgian news media quoted an anonymous source saying he was definitely there.

Mr Van der Sijpt, clearly aware of how such a revelation would appear, tried to cast doubt on the idea that the law prevented authorities from capturing Abdeslam, saying measures were taken to monitor the area, although he would not specify what was done. “If Salah Abdeslam had been there during the night, we would have gotten him,” he said. “We took measures throughout the night to make sure that Salah Abdeslam could not flee that particular home if he indeed was there. All we know is that we had good reasons to believe that Salah Abdeslam was in the house that night, and that the next morning the raid was negative.”

Still, the notion that police knew where one of the attackers was hiding and did not pounce strained the credulity, apparently, even of Mr Geens, the country’s top justice official, who in his television interview described the legal restriction against nighttime raids — dating to 1969 — as “a big handicap”. He said police wanted to raid the home where they suspected Abdeslam was hiding right away, but could not act until after 5am, which he said was “too late”.

The decision to abide by the law also underscored the consistent tension between security and civil liberties that governments in Europe and the United States have struggled to balance in an era of terrorist threats.

Three days after that failed raid on Nov 16 in the Molenbeek district, the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Charles Michel, proposed 18 new security measures in an address to Parliament, including one that would allow police to conduct raids at any time of the homes of people suspected of involvement in terrorist activity or suspected of possessing explosives, firearms or weapons of mass destruction on the premises. However, Parliament is not expected to take up the proposed measures before the end of January, and some lawmakers have expressed reservations about the measures because of civil liberties concerns.

Short of more targeted measures, the Brussels region was put on the highest possible state of alert on Nov 21, with schools, markets and public transport closed. Belgian authorities stepped up the frequency and intensity of the raids, although no major new intelligence has publicly emerged from those actions.

Mr Van der Sijpt said no exceptions to the law were permitted, even after Brussels authorities raised the city’s alert level, putting it in a state of virtual lockdown for several days. The law prohibits raids on private homes between 9pm and 5am, unless the person living there invites authorities to enter, or has been directly observed committing a crime.

Even on the night of Nov 22, when authorities — alarmed about the possibility of an attack in Belgium — conducted a series of raids in the Brussels region, they had to begin the raids at 8.45pm, 15 minutes before the 9pm cut-off point. Days later, when the government lowered the city’s threat level, it said it was highly likely that the raids had helped avert a new attack. But of 16 people who were detained, 15 were released the next day. No explosives or weapons were found during the raids. THE NEW YORK TIMES