Belgian Antiterrorist Official
The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz is reporting that Belgian and several other Western countries were well aware that ISIS had an operational plan that was targeting the airport and subway.
The Belgian security services, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, Haaretz has learned.
The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.
Despite the advance warning, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels, where most of the European Union agencies are located, was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.
Not only that but Turkish officials had warned Belgium about the one of the attackers. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that his country had deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers from the Brussels attack and informed Belgium that he was a radical extremist, but that Belgium ignored them. Brussels police have said that it doesn’t pay for them to arrest these terrorists because they are freed within hours.
Erdogan said:
“One of the attackers in Brussels is an individual we detained in Gaziantep in June 2015 and deported. We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free. Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter.”
It will be interesting to see if Belgian voters decide to replace their government over their lax attitude towards terrorists. It will be even more interesting to see if Belgian does retalliate, whether the UN will condemn them the same way they condemn Israel. ISIS has said that they plan to hit other Europian cities and reports say that 400 trained bombers have been distributed throughout Europe in order to spread terror.