The
Belgian intelligence gap
Brussels
law enforcement authorities questioned, then freed two suspects in
Paris attacks.
By MAÏA DE LA BAUME
AND GIULIA PARAVICINI 11/18/15, 12:16 AM CET Updated 11/18/15, 12:36
AM CET
The two brothers who
allegedly took part in Friday’s attacks in Paris were questioned by
Belgian authorities after one of them tried to travel to Syria
earlier this year, but the Belgians let them go, a spokesman for the
federal prosecutors’ office said Tuesday.
The revelation that
Belgian authorities not only knew that the Abdeslam brothers were
radicalized Islamists, but interrogated them, raises pointed
questions about the actions of the country’s law enforcement and
intelligence services in the months before the strikes on the French
capital.
The failure of
Belgium to spot a plot allegedly organized in Brussels or to flag
concerns about the brothers to the French highlight gaps in the
gathering and sharing of information between countries about
potential terrorist activity.
The Abdeslams were
allegedly part of an eight-man team that carried out the coordinated
gun and bomb attacks in Paris that killed 129 people. The Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, claimed responsibility for the
Paris attacks.
“We knew they were
radicalized, and that they could go to Syria,” Eric Van Der Sypt,
spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, told
POLITICO. “But they showed no sign of possible threat. Even if we
had signaled them to France, I doubt that we could have stopped
them.”
European security
officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least one of
the brothers had traveled repeatedly between their home in Brussels
and Paris in the weeks before the attack.
The older brother,
31-year-old Ibrahim Abdeslam — who blew himself up outside the
Comptoir Voltaire café in Paris — “tried to go to Syria but he
only got to Turkey,” said Van Der Sypt. The law enforcement didn’t
detain him because “we didn’t have proof that he took part in the
activities of a terrorist group,” he added.
The younger brother
Salah Abdeslam is believed to be hiding in the Brussels area, another
Belgian official told POLITICO.
“He was
interrogated on his return, and his brother too,” said Van Der
Sypt, referring to 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who is still on the
run. It’s not clear if Salah Abdeslam tried to get to Syria.
Ibrahim Abdeslam
denied that he had tried to travel to Syria, the prosecutor’s
spokesman added.
Missed signals
For Louis Caprioli,
who ran French intelligence for 20 years and is now a consultant for
security firm GEOS, the attacks in Paris expose the shortcomings in
cooperation between national police and intelligence agencies across
national borders that terrorists traverse freely. “Belgian
authorities could have signaled to the French that these attackers
would threaten France’s security,” he said.
Over the past two
years, Belgium has experienced a spate of successful and foiled
terrorist attacks. Last year a French gunman of Algerian origin
killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels; in January this
year, Belgian police killed two men in raids on an Islamist group in
the city of Verviers; and in August, a man opened fire on a train
from Amsterdam to Paris via Brussels.
In all these cases,
as well the Paris attacks, the suspects had links to the immigrant
Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which Belgian police have raided
several times since Saturday afternoon.
“We knew they were
radicalized, and that they could go to Syria. But they showed no sign
of possible threat. Even if we had signaled them to France, I doubt
that we could have stopped them.”
The older Abdeslam
brother ran a café, Les Beguines, which had a rough reputation in
the neighborhood and was closed down on November 4, nine days before
the Paris attacks.
“There was a group
of drug traffickers active in the café,” said Françoise
Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek, who added that it was inevitable
that “from such delinquency, it’s only a small step towards
radicalization.”
Van Der Sypt, from
the prosecutor’s office, said cooperation between Belgium and
France was “very good,” but acknowledged that, with all the
militants traveling to and from Syria, “Belgian police are already
struggling to monitor these people 24/7.”
As a share of its
population of 10 million, more Belgians have joined extremist
militant groups in Syria and Iraq than citizens of any other EU
state, according to studies. About five percent of Belgium’s
population is Muslim.
More than 130
Belgians who fought in Syria have come back, according to police and
prosecutor sources.
France and Belgium
have task forces in each others’ countries to facilitate the
sharing of information about terrorist activity, said Peter de Wael,
spokesman for the Belgian federal police.
Belgian
complications
Belgium’s unusual
legal and administration systems complicates cooperation on
counterterrorism with other countries. The country’s law
enforcement agencies are Balkanized along linguistic and regional
lines. Its counterterrorism laws give authorites less latitude to
investigate terrorism than in France.
“When I need to
find the name of a car owner who is suspected of a crime, I need to
send them a letter of request,” complained a senior Italian police
official, speaking to POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “I only
have these problems with the Belgians.”
Belgian
counterterrorism laws predate the rise of ISIL and the exodus of
young Muslim men to Syria. The laws “were never designed to
prosecute people going abroad to fight — they was only designed to
combat terrorism domestically,” said Kris Luyckx, a lawyer who
defended one foreign fighter in a trial this year.
Prompted by the
shootout in Verviers this year, the government proposed 12 new
counter-terrorism measures. It is now illegal to travel abroad with
the intention of joining a terrorist group, and easier for security
forces to tap the phones or electronic communications of suspected
terrorists or recruiters.
“Privacy must
sometimes yield to security,” said Brecht Vermeulen, who chairs the
Belgiam Parliament’s interior affairs committee.
Belgium still has a
long way to go before its rules are as tough as those in France.
French legislation on surveillance has been toughened up since the
Islamist attacks earlier this year on the satirical paper Charlie
Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store in Paris, in which 17 people died,
though the law has not yet been fully implemented. French authorities
can keep terrorist suspects in custody for up to six days without
charging them — in Belgium, it is 48 hours.
“We thought that
it wasn’t necessary, we know how to handle 48-hour custodies,”
said Van Der Sypt, who described France’s anti-terrorism laws as
more “severe.”
After every
terrorist strike since 9/11 in Europe, most recently the Charlie
Hebdo attacks in January, European countries have pledged to improve
cooperation on policing and intelligence. Despite that,
counterterrorism remains mostly a national matter.
“When it comes to
European anti-terrorist policy, coordination does not exist,” said
one senior European official, who asked not to be identified by name.
“When it comes to security, it is 95 percent the responsibility of
the member states.”
Police with borders
The one tool created
to share information about wanted or missing persons — the Schengen
Information System — “is not used in a systematic way by member
states on our external borders,” said the senior Italian
anti-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Belgian Interior
Minister Jan Jambon, speaking at a POLITICO event in Brussels last
week, said the exchange of information within the EU “isn’t
always so obvious” but had improved a lot since the Charlie Hebdo
attacks. Before then, four member countries were contributing
information to Europol, the EU agency that coordinates the response
to organized crime and terrorism. “Today, almost every country is
contributing to the exchange of information,” said Jambon.
According to an
internal document issued by European Council counter-terrorism
coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, an excerpt of which was seen by
POLITICO, 14 EU states, five other entities and Interpol have
registered 1,595 people as foreign terrorist fighters on the Europol
information system.
In the wake of the
Paris attacks, calls are growing for an EU-wide response to ISIL
terrorism. EU interior ministers on Friday will discuss possible
measures, including better tracking of weapons and access to records
of airlines’ passenger name records .
The ministers’
task could be made easier after the European Parliament civil
liberties committee voted overwhelmingly last month to harmonize some
of the existing national rules to help the fight against terrorism.
The full Parliament will vote on their report this month in
Strasbourg.
Security officials
who push for improved coordination cite the case of Mehdi Nemmouche,
the alleged 29-year-old perpetrator of the 2014 Jewish Museum attack
in Brussels. A month before the attack, he arrived at a German
airport, where he was stopped by German security. The Germans tipped
off French intelligence — “but nothing happened and a month later
the guy showed up in Brussels with a gun,” said the Italian police
official.
Laurens Cerulus and
Hans von der Buchard contributed to this article.
Authors:
Maïa de La Baume
and Giulia Paravicini
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