On Wednesday, Amos Harel reported at Haaretz that Belgian security services had advance warning that Brussels was to be attacked by militant ISIS radicals. Not only that, other western intelligence services had specific warning that the airport and the subway system would be targeted.
Harel added:
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.
As far as is known, the attacks were planned by the headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqa, Syria, which it has pronounced as the capital of its Islamic caliphate.
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The terror cell responsible for the Brussels attack, he added, “was closely associated with the network behind the series of attacks in Paris last November” and both appear to have been part of the same infrastructure.
Both, he said, were “connected at the top by the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for the Paris attacks and its implementation.”
Abdeslam was arrested last week in Brussels after escaping Paris, and it seems that arrest was the trigger for the Belgian attack.
He also warned that “other cells connected to ISIS in Western Europe will attempt to carry out additional attacks in the near future, either in Belgium or in other countries involved in the war against the terror organization in Syria and Iraq.”
This comes on the heels of Obama’s statement that ISIS is not “an existential threat to us.”
Related:
- Obama: ISIS is not ‘an existential threat to us’
- What did he know? Turkish President Erdoğan seems to predict attack on Brussels days before attack
- Obama on Paris attack: ‘I don’t want to speculate’ on who is responsible — Video
- Obama: We can’t kill terrorists who murder innocents, suggests jobs program
- Obama snubs march against terror in Paris, 50 world leaders participate
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