Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly blamed Belgian authorities for failing to stop the Brussels terror attacks on Tuesday, which claimed four Americans among the 34 victims.
Kelly accused the Belgian government and police forces for failing to share intelligence amongst each other as well as with other EU nations in a radio interview on Sunday.
Kelly said: ‘I think they never received a wake up call as we did, as far as 9/11 is concerned.
During John Catsimatidis radio show AM 970, Kelly said: ‘Belgium has a complex government. It has police forces that don’t talk to each other.
‘I think they never received a wake up call as we did, as far as 9/11 is concerned.
‘They sort of have remained disjointed for quite a while . . .
They’re not sharing intelligence internally in Belgium; and they’re not sharing it with other members of the European Union.’
Kelly’s statements mirrored Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon’s own assessment of the country’s structural problems following Tuesday’s attacks.
With 19 municipalities, 19 mayors and six police departments in Brussels, Jambon acknowledged the difficulty in sharing intelligence among the separate divisions, which operate in both Dutch and French.
He also conceded the country’s shortcomings after the Turkish President said one of the Brussels Airport terrorists, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, was arrested near the Syrian border last summer and returned to Belgium with warnings that he was ‘a foreign fighter’.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Belgian authorities failed to confirm the suspect’s links to terrorism.
Jambon, whose offer to resign on Thursday was declined by the prime minister, said: ‘There have been errors.’
He also said Belgium’s justice system and security services are still lagging behind despite the government’s 600 million euro ($670 million) investment into police and security services over the past two years.
The country of 11million is, for its size, the biggest European supplier of foreign fighters in Syria.
Belgium’s far-right protesters hijacked a peace march in the Belgian capital today as the country is still reeling.
They gathered at Place de la Bourse in Brussels this afternoon and unfurled a banner denouncing ISIS before police used a water cannon on the angry crowd.
In scenes that compounded a week of grief for Belgians, protesters calling themselves ‘The Nation’ were seen making Nazi salutes as they became embroiled in a heated argument with pro-migrant groups.
