International

Belgium ignored warning on ISIL attacker –Turkey

Published

8 years ago

March 24, 2016

Belgium ignored warning on ISIL attacker --Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Belgium for not taking pro-active steps over one of the two suspected Brussels airport bombers.

Erdogan said Turkey had earlier detained and then deported one of the two suspected suicide bombers, while also suggesting that Belgian authorities ignored a warning that he was a “foreign terrorist fighter”

Read also: Brussels attack: Hundreds of policemen in massive manhunt for suspect

“We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free,” Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

Continuing, Erdogan said; “Turkish authorities detained Brahim el-Bakraoui in June last year in Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border, and then deported him to the Netherlands in July at his request.

“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, the Belgian authorities could not identify a link to terrorism.” Erdogan informed.

What is not known now is how Bakraoui managed to escape immigration officials as he moved to Belgium from Netherlands to partake in a bomb attack which claimed the lives of 31 people and injuring 270 people at the Brussels airport and a metro train station on Tuesday morning.

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