Trial of November 13: the end of the muddle between the intelligence services?
Audio 03:37
Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspects of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, was able to cross the border to Belgium on November 14, for lack of coordination between intelligence services.
AFP - DSK
Text by: Laxmi Lota
10 mins
The sharing of information related to terrorism in Europe has been strongly criticized after the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 and those in Brussels on March 22, 2016. The national intelligence services have indeed jealously guarded the information they had.
From the summer of 2015, however, several sources knew that Belgian and French nationals returning from Syria were preparing attacks.
What about today ?
Finally, is there real European cooperation in the field of intelligence?
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From our correspondent in Brussels,
November 14, 2015: mess in Cambrai. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam was arrested by the French gendarmerie. The only living attacker of the terrorist commando, he is listed by the European information system Schengen. But his radicalization is not noted. The French called their Belgian colleagues after letting the car leave.
George Dallemagne is a Belgian federal deputy.
He investigated the flaws and dysfunctions linked to the Franco-Belgian fight against terrorism: “
Things were going wrong at the time, the data was not necessarily shared, far from it.
We remember in particular the episode of Cambrai, when Salah Abdeslam fled, left Paris the day after the attacks of November 13 and was intercepted by the French gendarmerie before being released fairly quickly.
"
From the summer of 2015, the CIA and the intelligence services in France and Belgium have information on the preparation of attacks by Belgian and French nationals.
An alert even directly concerns Salah Abdeslam.
"
Some alerts had been given, in particular by police officers from the Brussels police,"
continues George Dallemagne.
Unfortunately, these alerts were not taken seriously enough.
[Salah Abdeslam] was simply flagged for discreet follow-up, covert screening, and he was not flagged for immediate arrest.
However, he should have been, if all the information that had been collected about him had been gathered and had been handled correctly.
"
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To read also: Trial of November 13: what were the warning signs of the attacks in Paris?
400 million data
What about today ? Information sharing has greatly improved, explains Gilles de Kerchove, the European Counterterrorism Coordinator: “
Member States share much more, if not almost everything they have in the area of terrorism. There is a tradition in intelligence, which is to exchange more bilaterally than multilaterally. Since then, we have moved to multi-completions within the European Union.
"
A counterterrorism center has been set up in the Netherlands. An indispensable tool for George Dallemagne. "
There are intelligence officers from all the countries of the European Union who exchange in real time their information concerning terrorism, in particular, and all the threats that may weigh on the populations of European countries
", specifies the deputy. Belgian Federal.
The problem today is less the sharing of information than the analysis of thousands of data.
Gilles de Kerchove sees this as the challenge to be overcome over the next few years.
“
The intelligence service and the police are now facing a data tsunami!
How do you want a human being to be able to process 400 million pieces of data?
So you have to use artificial intelligence, you have to develop information processing algorithms - it's not easy - but you also have to develop the capacity of analysts.
"
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To read also: Trial of November 13: meeting with the wives of the jihadist brothers Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain
The near future of cyberterrorism
Could this new management of vital information avoid the worst today?
Be careful, warns the coordinator for the fight against terrorism: new forms of attacks are unfortunately emerging and the European Union must prepare for them.
“
So far there is no cyberterrorism in the first sense of the term to derail trains, to take control of an air traffic center, to take control of a roadblock, what do I know,
explains Gilles de Kerchove .
It could happen before five years.
In the same way, imagine that one can, at a given moment, carry out manipulations of viruses.
Imagine someone who could use a drone and broadcast it over a football stadium, etc. We are in a nightmare scenario, but we have to prepare for it.
"
A European Intelligence College was created in Paris in 2019. It allows an exchange of ideas, but does not train new experts.
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To read also: Trial of November 13: the origins of jihadism in France
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Belgium
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Terrorism
Trial 13-November
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