The shock caused by last Monday’s brutal slaying of two Swedes in Brussels by the Tunisia-born Abdeslam Lassoued—for years an illegal migrant in Belgium and avowed ISIS supporter—continues to reverberate throughout Belgian politics.
While the immediate threat has been dealt with, questions have been raised about the government’s migration and deportation policy.
As revelations about Lassoued’s background continue to emerge, Belgian authorities’ inability to properly identify, keep track of, and indeed, deport, potential security threats has been laid bare for all to see.
To discuss last Monday’s (wholly preventable) attack and how to address it, on Wednesday, October 18th, a special House Committee was called.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD), Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD), and State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor (CD&V)—who has come under withering criticism for her department’s failings—were present to hear questions from Belgian parliamentarians.
In what ended up being a 6.5-hour-long session continuing into early night, the Belgian PM pointed to deportation as not being “that simple”—a response to public and political outrage over the fact that, while Lassoued was not on a Belgian watch list for terrorism, in 2016, he had been flagged as a possible Muslim extremist by a foreign police agency, which Belgian authorities back then were aware of.
Government blames lacking international communication
De Croo went on to stress that Belgian security services did not know that the 45-year-old Lassoued had occasionally visited Sweden (from 2012 and 2014, as reported by Expressen ) where he had been identified as a potential security threat, and had even spent two years in prison.
He added:
We did not have that important information and it could have allowed our security services to make a different assessment. When potentially dangerous people travel, our services need to know about it.
In his own statement, Minister of Justice Van Quickenborne expanded on that point, as he lamented the proper exchange of information between European countries (in this case, between Belgium and Sweden), which he felt was coming up short.
“If we had had this information, we would have had a different picture,” he said, while mentioning that Belgian security services also had no knowledge about Lassoued’s past in Italy. Lassoued had come to European shores illegally by landing on the now-notorious southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
Van Quickenborne did not want to speculate on where Lassoued got his weapon, since that will be part of the ongoing investigation.
However, he added, “a whole bunch of illegal weapons are in circulation. In the fight against that, we need to double our efforts, and strengthen the rule of law.”
Failed follow-up after rejected asylum application
State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor (CD&V), who Vlaams Belang called on to resign over the tragedy, gave a comprehensive timeline of Lassoued’s stay in Belgium.
On October 31st, 2019, he applied for asylum. After that, contact between him and authorities was barely existent. The man did not show up for interviews, nor did he respond to the order to leave the territory in 2020.
In 2022, Brussels police first started to pick up signs of Lassoued’s possible radicalization, after he had given khutbas (sermons) in the local mosque in Schaarbeek.
Van Quickenborne added that an additional investigation by state security “later followed,” but that it concluded that Lassoued should not end up on the OCAD watch list for extremists.
De Moor went on to admit that “very frankly, there is a problem with illegal residence in our country,” with estimates “ranging from 100,000 to 200,000 people.” According to the latest data, Belgium has a current (legal) population of 11,695,045.
As reported by Doorbraak, having consulted figures released by Belgium’s Dienst Voor Vreemdelingenzaken (DVZ), which handles asylum applications, almost 60% of asylum seekers in Belgium have their application rejected. While this would require them to leave the territory, the vast majority of them remain there illegally.
In September alone, the DVZ registered 3,243 new asylum requests. During the first nine months of this year, the department registered 25,000 applications, compared to 37,000 for the entirety of 2022.
Last month, 44% of those who had applied were granted asylum, which was more or less in line with the percentage seen in past months and years.
More staggering was that during the first eight months of this year, 16,062 asylum seekers had been ordered to leave Belgium.
However, the number of people who actually left during that period was just 4,158, according to Vlaams Belang MP Barbara Pas, who was interviewed in Doorbraak’s print magazine. “That number includes both voluntary and forced returns and so-called drives to the border.”
In 2022, only 5,497 illegals were deported from the country.
Compared to the period before the COVID-19 era, effective deportations have dwindled: between 2015-2018, each year recorded an average of 9,000 to 11,000 deportations.
De Moor now acknowledges the need for a “better performing” return policy, which is the “most difficult” responsibility for her department. “We must not give people false hope,” she said, adding that “those who cannot stay must return.”
New return policy said to include ‘forced deportations’
Next week, De Moor’s bill outlining a more demanding return policy will be voted on in Parliament.
This would include individual follow-ups of rejected asylum seekers so that “it is more difficult for people to go off the radar” and an “obligation to cooperate for those who have to leave the territory.”
“Rejected asylum seekers who do not accept an invitation will see their forced deportation expedited from now on,” De Moor told Doorbraak in an earlier interview.
De Moor’s promises did not mollify the former State Secretary for Asylum and Migration (2014-2018) and MP Theo Francken (N-VA).
After accusing the De Croo government of “pampering” asylum seekers, he warned De Moor, saying that “the faucet of illegal migration to Europe is wide open,” and urged that “more agreements with North African countries are needed to keep those boats out.”
During an interview the same morning with Dh, Francken labeled Belgium’s migration and asylum policy as “disastrous,” since its return policy is so enfeebled “that no one is leaving.” While “not everything was perfect” while he was in charge, “now it is total chaos,” he added.
During a press conference the previous day, Prime Minister De Croo acknowledged the need for more coercion. For this, he added, “we need more cooperation from the [migrants’] countries of origin. A number of North African countries in particular refuse to take back their deported nationals. This will be one of our country’s major priorities during the Belgian EU [Council] presidency early next year,” he said.
MEP Barbara Pas (Vlaams Belang) mock-congratulated De Croo’s government on its “particularly slow progress,” questioning why this new-found realization came only now, and not after past incidents between police and illegals (one in which two officers were injured by a machete-wielding assailant).
She continued that she was “no longer as naïve to think that those responses that need to be there will come. Regaining control of borders, deporting deportees, eradicating Jihadism root and branch … Those responses will not come from Vivaldi [PM De Croo’s coalition government, which includes the socialist PS and Groen, and which during the debate termed the problem one of security rather than one of asylum].”
Nor was Pas much impressed by De Moor’s policy proposals.
“Do you really believe that a good conversation with a return coach will make individuals like Abdesalem Lassoued leave of their own accord?,” she queried.
In his concluding statement, De Croo said that the only lesson he drew from the past few days was that cooperation between agencies and European countries had to be improved and that both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Swedish Prime Minister had acknowledged that need the day before.
