Again, we see that not only was one of the terrorists who struck Brussels known by the police, a foreign government had actually sounded the alarm bells long before the terror attack. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that they had deported the ISIS fanatic back to Belgium last year, and had even given the authorities ample warning of his militant background.
The incident mirrors how Iraqi authorities warned France of the impending Paris attacks; warnings that went ignored for whatever reason. The bombers were also well-known by the French authorities.
Analogies can be drawn between these incidents in Europe and how Russia had warned the US about the Boston bombers, though Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister, for his part, has so far resisted his American counterparts’ all-too-predictable calls for greater mass surveillance.
Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who blew himself up at the Brussels Airport on Tuesday, was arrested in Gaziantep southern Turkey last summer. He was deported to Holland before being sent to Belgium.
“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism,” said president Erdogan.
Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui detonated suicide vests and explosives-laden suitcases, killing 14 people. Ibrahim’s brother, Khalid El Bakraoui, detonated a suicide vest in a Brussels Metro train, killing 20 more people.
Apparently, Ibrahim also left a typed suicide note in a bin near to 15 KG of explosives, an AK-47 and an ISIS flag (the terrorist trifecta), discovered during a police raid:
“I don’t know what to do. I’m in a hurry. I’m on the run. People are looking for me everywhere. And if I give myself up then I’ll end up in a cell,” reads the note which was conveniently located near to all manner of incriminating evidence.
The Belgian police claim that the two brothers had somehow escaped from the police, in the midst of a gunfight during an anti-terror raid, just eight days prior to the bombings. Somehow they managed to find another address to store the guns and explosives used during the attack.
The Daily Mail further notes the following:
“All of the men named as bombers yesterday were ‘well known’ to detectives because of their links to ISIS and all had significant criminal records. The El Bakraoui brothers had been in jail recently for gun smuggling, burglary and car crime.“
Sources: The Independent Daily Mail, Reuters, AP, Vice
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Turkey deported him to a country of his chosen, the Netherlands