Belgian security forces under scrutiny

A long list of blunders and missed opportunities by intelligence services in the run-up to the Brussels attacks has raised urgent questions across Europe about whether they could have prevented the carnage.

The suicide bombers repeatedly slipped through the fingers of Belgian authorities -- with one of them remaining free to attack despite having been deported by Turkey as a jihadist just months earlier.

Poor coordination in a dysfunctional political system divided between French and Flemish speakers and a failure to infiltrate networks of jihadists have contributed to a string of failures that has caused international concern.

But some experts have warned against singling out Belgium, saying similar situations could happen in other countries as extremist cells become increasingly skilled at flying under the radar.

Nevertheless, criticisms that Belgium rejected back in November when it emerged that the Paris attacks were planned there have now begun to hit home, with two ministers offering to resign over "errors" in handling the Brussels attackers.

"We're paying a big price for the fact there is a lack of cooperation," said Hans Bonte, the mayor of Vilvoorde, a northern Brussels suburb where many Belgians of Moroccan origin have left to join the Islamic State group in Syria.

Bonte told AFP there is a "lack of information which is transferred quickly enough or at all between" six police zones in Brussels or between the federal police and local police or between the state security services and local forces.

- 'No one interrupted' -
Belgium, a country of 11 million people with an estimated 400,000 Muslims, has the highest number of foreign fighters per capita in the European Union, with around 500 who have left for Syria and Iraq.

But time and time again the authorities have appeared unable to tackle the growing jihadist networks.

All three Brussels bombers -- airport attackers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui and metro attacker Khalid El Bakraoui, Ibrahim's younger brother -- were all linked to key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam.

Last week, Abdeslam was himself arrested just around the corner from the family home in the troubled district of Molenbeek, after four months on the run.

Meanwhile the Bakraoui brothers both had long criminal records. Ibrahim had been given a nine-year sentence in 2010 over a gunfight with police after a bungled robbery at a Western Union office.

Prosecutors said this week that the brothers had no record of a link to terrorism -- but then admitted that Khalid was the subject of an international arrest warrant for terrorism in December and had rented an apartment used by the Paris attacks cell.

They also issued a wanted notice for Laachraoui on Monday, the day before the attacks.
But the biggest questions have been over the claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Belgium ignored intelligence about Ibrahim El Bakraoui after Turkey arrested him near the Syrian border as a "foreign terrorist fighter" and deported him in June 2015.

"What is a fact is that these brothers were well known...(and) were also convicted," Bonte said.

"It is a very strange feeling that you have the knowledge now that they were living in Brussels and no-one has seen them and no-one has interrupted their organisation."

- 'Not North Korea' -

Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Thursday that he and Justice Minister Koen Geens offered to resign over "errors" regarding the Turkish revelations but Prime Minister Charles Michel refused.

Pieter van Ostaeyen, a Belgian expert on jihadists, said the complex system of 19 Brussels mayoral districts and multiple police zones created by the bilingual federal system make "it a lot harder for open and transparent communication".

Van Ostaeyen said the Belgian authorities also lack human intelligence sources who "can blend into suspected networks" in vulnerable Muslim communities in areas like Molenbeek and Schaarbeek, where the Brussels bombers hid out before the attacks.

He added that Belgian security forces lack qualified staff like Arabic speakers and singled out the Belgian federal police for having only "one person working half-time tracking social media," which jihadists frequently use to recruit members.

But Yves Trotignon, a former counter-terrorism analyst with France's DGSE external security services, said it is difficult for Belgium and other democracies to stop all people determined to blow themselves up at soft targets.

"Belgium is not a police state, it is not North Korea," he told AFP.

In any case, Belgium is in many ways a microcosm of fractured intelligence cooperation across the 28-nation European Union, whose headquarters are in Brussels, officials said.

"It is still only five member states which provide 90 percent of the information," an EU diplomat said.

EU interior ministers were meeting in Brussels on Thursday to find ways to improve coordination.
Source: AFP