November 13 Paris Attacks: The failures of Belgian police

In the aftermath of the 2015 Paris attacks, the control body of Belgian police conducted an investigation into the deficiencies in tracking the movements of a number of members of the terrorist cell that executed the attacks.

“Le monde” newspaper has studied this confidential report in its entirety and published a detailed investigation on its Sunday-Monday issue about what it called the failures of Belgian police in preventing the terrorist attacks that took place in Paris on November 13, 2015, in which dozens of French citizens and foreigners were killed.

After analyzing the Belgian’s police top-secret report, The French newspaper stated that in the wake of these attacks the Belgian security service was careless about a number of warnings and information in its possession.

The report found a set of data that was available to Belgium during the eighteen months preceding these attacks in Paris, information that focuses on three members of this cell led by ISIS: the Belgian of Moroccan origin, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, one of the masterminds of the operations, who was killed in a raid in Saint-Denis after the intervention of Moroccan intelligence, Ibrahim Abdel Salam, who detonated his explosive belt in the “Contoire Voltaire” cafe, and his brother Salah, who is still alive, the main accused in the trial of the November 13 attacks, which will begin Wednesday, September 8 in Paris.

The French newspaper tracked the Belgian police’s flaws during the timeline that extends from July 2014 to June 2015

July 2014

The top-secret report reveals that 16 months before the November 2015 attacks, an investigator in the Anti-Terrorism Department of the Federal Judicial Police in Brussels received information that two extremist brothers are planning to join ISIS in Syria.
The policewoman quickly informed her superiors orally, and the two brothers (Salah and Ibrahim Abdel Salam), two French of Moroccan origin, born in Belgium and living in Molenbeek, were identified.
The first flaw was the failure to prepare a report on this information, meaning that it was not found in any written record, as the investigator who received the information had automatically contacted the Belgian police control authority after the attacks to report this matter, but no action was taken.

January 15, 2015

A week after the attacks on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine in France, Belgian special forces stormed an apartment in the Walloon region. During this mission, two Belgian Jihadists were killed, according to the same newspaper.
Many weapons were found inside the apartment.
Belgium police found out that Abdel Hamid Abaaoud was leading the attacks from Greece, and after escaping arrest in Athens on January 17, he was able to return to Syria.

January 25, 2015

Less than two weeks after this operation, Ibrahim Abdel Salam boarded a plane to Istanbul and then crossed to Syria. He took advantage of this short stay to attend military training and meet his friend Abaaoud. It was filmed and broadcast on the Internet that included footage from France showing Ibrahim and his brother shooting at a wall, and say, “This is for François Hollande.”
Eleven months before November 13, the terrorist cell was forming, and despite related information, the Belgian Federal Anti-Terrorist Police failed to detect Ibrahim Abdeslam’s departure to Syria.

January 30, 2015

On this day, a policeman from Molenbeek Police Station prepared the first report on Salah Abdeslam and his relationship with Abaaoud, one of the most wanted terrorists in Europe. The policeman mentioned Ibrahim’s phone call with his brother Salah, on January 28, informing him that he was about to cross the border between Turkey and Syria.
Abdeslam was at that time the subject of a national and then international alert in the Schengen information system, but the policeman behind this report was not contacted by any service until the Paris attacks.

February 9, 2015

On this day, the Brussels Police District prepared a similar report on Salah Abdeslam’s brother Ibrahim Abdeslam.

February 16, 2015

Ibrahim Abd al-Salam returned from Syria on February 7, and was arrested in Brussels following road surveillance after finding in his possession drugs and a printed page from an online forum titled “Parents’ Permission for Jihad”.
He was briefly placed in custody for drug possession. His name was mentioned in “participation in the activities of a terrorist group.”
During police questioning, Ibrahim described ISIS as non-Muslims and claimed that his trip to Turkey was in order to visit malls and bars.
Ibrahim Abdel Salam’s home was searched, and several items were found, including a mobile phone and a USB key. However, the items were kept in the police station of Brussels.
During his arrest, His phone was examined superficially according to Le monde’s report.
After the November attacks, his phone was found in the police station and it was examined for a second time, with more efficient techniques. In the second examination, they found old Facebook conversations between Ibrahim and Abaaoud on the phone:
• Abaaoud: “We declared the caliphate, God is great”.
• Ibrahim: “God is great, I am coming, God willing, goodbye my brother.”
• Abaaoud: “May God guide you on the path of jihad and grant you martyrdom. Tear up these infidels and take from them the largest possible number of pigs and come join the army of God”.
• Ibrahim: “Ok brother, God willing, I will call you soon”.
Thus, Ibrahim Abdel Salam’s phone contained important information that, if it had been known at his arrest time would direct his investigation differently and perhaps prevent the future attacks.

February 25, 2015

On February 25, Salah Abdeslam was summoned by Brussels Police. He came to the station and his responses were like his brother’s.
He denied his will to go and fight in Syria. He was convinced of his friendship with Abaaoud, however, stating that he doesn’t sympathize with what Abaaoud is doing, referring to his extremist activities, “apart from jihad, he is a good person, but now I have no sympathy for what he is doing”, said Salah during the hearing.
The police officer edited his report and wrote, “On February 28, 2015, the Western Brussels Police District questioned Salah Abdeslam to verify his possible extremism. It turned out that he did not show any external signs of extremism, whether in his dress, appearance or words. There is no evidence to support the information that he intends to go to Syria to join the Islamic State.”

March 2015

The files of the two brothers, AbdeSlam, who were dealt with separately, were referred by the Federal Prosecution to the Counter-Terrorism Service to take charge of the two investigations. Despite the fact that the two files were classified as “red files,” they were kept.
On the twenty-fourth of March, the Directorate of International Police Cooperation in Belgium received a report from French authorities warning that Ibrahim Abdel Salam had been monitored, and he was accompanied by two people at the French-British border.
Most of the Belgian departments received the information except the Federal Judicial Police in Brussels on which Belgium’s anti-terrorist police depend, and therefore no action was taken on this report.

June 2015

The Federal Prosecutor of Belgium decided to close the cases of Abdeslam and his brother without taking any further action, despite the failure to carry out many of the required investigative measures, notably examining their phones or email addresses.
A month later, the Belgian Federal Police received a disturbing request from a foreign intelligence service regarding threats of attack by dozens of fighters returning from Syria during the mass events.
These terrorist projects targeted several countries, including France and Belgium, and were led by Abdel Salam Abaaoud. The Belgian Police Control Commission noted that this request was treated as a mere request for information and not as a potential threat to Belgium.

August 2015

The threats became clearer, as French services questioned a “returnee” from Syria who explained in detail that Abaaoud was training and sending jihadists from Syria to launch a campaign of attacks in Europe.
After this order, French authorities issued an official denunciation addressed to the Belgian authorities, who had opened a judicial case regarding Abaaoud in September, a month before the attacks in Paris.
In its investigation, Le Monde stated that about 15 foreign intelligence services were working on the attacks projects attributed to Abaaoud at that time, and their failure to prevent the November 13 attacks was considered a global intelligence failure.

From August 30 to October 3

Between the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, Salah Abdeslam made about four to five trips to Hungary and Germany to escort dozens of Paris and Brussels attack commandos sneaking from Syria into the Belgian capital.
One of these flights was the subject of a search on the road to Austria on September 9, and Salah Abdeslam had brought with him two jihadists from Budapest, including Najim Laachraoui, the creator of the November 13 events and the suicide bomber at Brussels Airport.
Federal Police had justified to the Police Oversight Committee that this information was not processed due to the filing decision made by the Federal Prosecutor despite the international warning.

25 November 2015

On 10th and 11th November, the Abdel Salam brothers traveled to Paris to rent the rooms that would house the perpetrators of the terrorist attack the night before, and on November 12, they left Belgium together in a convoy of three cars to transport the ten terrorists to Paris.
On the following day (November 13, 2015), Ibrahim Abdel Salam participated in the attacks of November 13. He killed 39 people in Paris, along with Abdel Hamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, and then detonated his explosive belt in the “Contoire Voltaire”, where no one was killed except him.
Salah Abdeslam sent three suicide bombers to the Stade de France. He gave up his explosive belt and disappeared, until he was arrested four months later on March 18, 2016, in Molenbeek.