A Belgian magistrate has claimed that Belgium "has been neglecting its internal security for years" as the country's authorities begin their investigation into government failures preceding the terror attack in Brussels on Monday night.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity also stressed that the poor state of Belgium's security services is both a result of insufficient public funding and a lack of coordination between local and federal authorities.
"The federal police are underfunded and this poses a danger but the problem is elsewhere: Belgium has been neglecting its internal security for years," the magistrate told l'Echo.
A tragedy of errors
The official's comments follow Monday night's terror attack, in which an Islamic extremist shot and killed two Swedish nationals on Boulevard d'Ypres near Place Sainctelette. A third person was also injured.
The man was subsequently identified as 45-year-old Tunisian national Abdeslam Lassoued, a self-proclaimed ISIS member who had been living illegally in Belgium ever since his request for asylum was rejected in 2021. Lassoued later died after being shot in the chest following a police intervention at a café near his home in Schaerbeek early on Tuesday morning.
After the attack, Belgian Justice Minister Van Quickenborne reported that Lassoued had previously been convicted of "common legal offences" in Tunisia.
However, the minister also explained that Lassoued had not been flagged on the list of potentially dangerous people held by OCAM (the national body in charge of assessing terror threats), due to a lack of prior terrorism convictions. "Although he was known to law enforcement, there was no concrete indication of his radicalisation – that's why he was not on the OCAM [terrorist] watchlist," Van Quickenborne said in comments reported by Politico.
Police pictured on Rue Van Oost in Schaerbeek, where the suspected perpetrator of the attack in Brussels was shot dead. Credit: Belga / James Arthur Gekiere
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Brussels Minister for Employment Bernard Clerfayt denounced the Federal Government's failure to communicate Lassoued's presence in Brussels to the city's authorities.
"The presence of the terrorist in Belgium and Schaerbeek was known to the Foreigners' Office (FO), but was never communicated to the municipality, nor to its local police department!" he wrote.
Clerfayt also strongly criticised the Federal Government's failure to deport Lassoued after his asylum application was rejected.
"In March 2021, [Lassoued] was refused his asylum application and a given order to leave the territory was prepared. But because he did not have a known address, he could not be notified! So the FO wrote him off without trying to find out what became of him or where he had gone! And they didn't try to notify the local authorities again."
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Clerfyt's comments were echoed by Tim Vandeput, a federal MP for Open VLD, the liberal Flemish party led by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. "The return policy is too lax, this procedure has to be water-tight," he said.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who travelled to Brussels on Wednesday to commemorate the victims of the attack, similarly urged the EU to step up efforts to deport potentially dangerous individuals. "This is a time for more security, we can't be naive," he said.
