30-May-18: In Belgium, another murderous "lone-wolf" attack by a criminal already on the police watch list

Soraya Belkacemi, left, and Lucille Garcia, right,
the two police officers murdered in the attack [Image Source]

In Belgium, a pointless act of terror inspired by one man's religious fervor resulted in the deaths on Tuesday of several innocents and some questions that don't seem likely to be properly answered quickly.

The basic facts as gleaned from Irish Times and Standard UK:

• Benjamin Herman, a Belgian man of 36 described in reports as a petty criminal and drug dealer who was serving time in prison, was let out Monday on what some reports have called a day-release for "family leave". (Reuters calls it a two-day pass.) One source says he "was due to travel back to his home town of Rochfort, just 40 miles from Liege". But didn't.
• Instead he attacked two police officers, women of 45 and 53, from behind about at about 10.30am on a lovely late spring morning on a pleasant boulevard in the centre of Liege, Belgium’s third city. Those two victims are Soraya Belkacemi, 53, and Lucille Garcia, 45. Their work involved checking parking meters. Soraya Belkacemi was the mother of 13-year-old twin daughters who earlier lost their father, also a police officer, and are now tragically orphaned of both parents.
• First slashing their throats from behind, he then stabbed them both and succeeded in seizing their handguns. (Evidently parking meter officers carry guns in Belgium.)
• A young man sitting in a car nearby was his next victim: he shot him dead too. He is Cyril Vangriecken, 22.
• The armed attacker then rushed into a high school building about 100 meters away and took two female employees hostage; one of them was a cleaner. He used her as a human shield in the subsequent confrontation with armed authorities. (He also, it is reported, "spared the life of the high school janitor he took hostage because she is Muslim, according to the woman, who was hailed Wednesday for her courage as she faced off with the madman.")
• Police were called. The school's children were evacuated as a gun battle erupted in which the prisoner managed to wound four of the police officers before they shot him dead.
• La Libre Belgique newspaper quoting police source says the Moslem attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” – “God is greatest” in Arabic. Irish Times says Beaupère declined to comment when asked about that.
• According to De Standaard, a Flemish-language newspaper in Belgium, police suspect he also carried out the murder a day earlier of "a criminal associate whose body was found south of Liege".
• So is he a terrorist? The authorities are being cagey. "Prime Minister Charles Michel says Herman was indirectly mentioned in state security reports on radicalization, but did not have his name on a list maintained by an anti-terror assessment group" according to USNews.

Cyril Vangriecken, 22, shot dead while sitting in a parked car
[Image Source]

Some questions that come to mind:

• According to state broadcaster RTBF Herman, who was born in 1982, had a criminal record that included a number of convictions for theft, assault and drugs offences.
• A Belgian politician, Georges Dallemagne, quoted by Irish Times, said Herman was already on a police watch-list arising from his radicalization in jail and his conversion there to Islam. So why was he freed unsupervised? How realistic was it that he would peacefully come back to his prison cell?
• There's more disturbing background according to one newspaper source. He "had been jailed numerous times"; he "appeared in national security documents"; he was "extremely violent" according to prison officers. Does this amount to a profile? Does it trigger any defensive measures on behalf of society?
• Liege police chief Christian Beaupère told a news conference “The goal of the assassin was to target the police”. Is this based on something they knew ahead of time? Were precautions taken? Did the two murdered officers know he was nearby? And is that a full and complete statement of the motivation for this cowardly, worthless explosion of lethal violence?
• The police chief was asked to confirm that the killer shouted “Allahu Akbar” in the course of his moments in the sun. M. Beaupère declined to comment on the question.
• These are not the first murders of innocents carried out by petty criminals inspired to Islamist violence while incarcerated. 
• Reuters: "The national crisis centre, on high alert since attacks by Islamic State in Paris and Brussels in recent years, said it had not raised its alert level – an indication the man was acting alone and follow-up attacks were not expected." So does Belgium have a strategy for dealing with lone-wolf attacks? They're not entirely mysterious, after all - they have some glaring factors in common. Do the authorities know this? No one ought to subscribe to the view that all members of any specific faith community are plotting to murder people, but are there any patterns worth taking into account when safe-guarding cities and populations?
• The politician Georges Dallemagne, who evidently [Irish Times] sits on several Belgian parliamentary security committees, tweeted: “The supervision of radicalised prisoners remains tragically flawed.” How concerned are Belgians to change that dangerous state of affairs?

After the murders [Image Source]

The phenomenon of the lone wolf is not a new one [click for past "Lone Wolf" posts of ours] and no more mysterious than any other aspect of criminology. Too often, public officials seem to use the term after criminal attacks have thrust them into the news by implying that if it's a "lone wolf" attack, what do you want from us? And if radicalization - to use the polite and somewhat vague term that most of the news industry does - is a factor, why aren't there more indications in the media of what's being done to identify individuals who have undergone it? 

Which is more problematic: avoiding any public discussion of it? Or burying its victims and comforting their families?

And let's agree that Belgium, with its vast problems involving terror and lone wolves acting individually as well as in large, well-organized packs, is only slightly different from most of Europe. And not only Europe.

UPDATE Wednesday May 30, 2018 at 11:00 pm: According to this report, ISIS, the Islamic State terror group today claimed one of its “soldiers” carried out the murder of the two policewomen and a student in Liege, quoting the jihadists' Amaq propaganda agency. “The author of the attack on the city of Liege in Belgium is a soldier of the Islamic State,” IS said in a statement published on Amaq’s Telegram account a day after the attack. It said “he led the attack in response to calls to target the countries of the US-led international coalition” which is fighting the jihadist group mainly in Syria.

27-Aug-17: On British and Belgian streets - terrorist attacks, religious declarations, fast responses

The child is Palestinian Arab, and so is the incitement. But the message
has reached Europe and European targets and it's not directed just at Jews or Israelis

Everyone in this incident is of course innocent until determined by law to be guilty, and there's no terrorism involved until the police say there is, and no one should draw inferences about the role that this or that or any religious doctrine played in the events of this past Friday.

A terror suspect drove at police outside Buckingham Palace and yelled 'Allahu akbar' while reaching for a 4ft sword before he was arrested by three unarmed officers. The 26-year-old from Luton was wrestled to the ground and incapacitated with CS gas by the officers, two of which suffered injuries, at about 8.30 pm... Metropolitan Police said the suspect had been arrested under the Terrorism Act and was currently in custody in a central London police station... As three unarmed PCs exited the van and approached the blue Toyota Prius, the suspect reached for a 4ft sword in the footwell. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

A lone wolf? Of course:

Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'I would like to pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of these officers who quickly brought this incident under control... Officers from the Counter Terrorism Command are now investigating and searches are being carried out in the Luton area today.
'We believe the man was acting alone and we are not looking for other suspects at this stage. 'While we cannot speculate on what the man was intending to do - this will be determined during the course of the investigation - it is only right that we investigate this as a terrorist incident at this time. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

That was then. Today it looks different:

A second man has been arrested over a suspected terrorist attack outside Buckingham Palace, during which police were attacked by a man armed with a sword. A 30-year-old man was apprehended by officers at an address in west London on Sunday morning, Scotland Yard said. Police are carrying out a search in the area...  The second man was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism and was taken into custody. The arrest was carried out by officers from the Met’s counter-terrorism command... Police initially believed the 26-year-old man acted alone and said their investigation would look into the first arrested man’s mental health. Some other incidents thought to have been terror attacks have later turned out to have been driven by mental health problems.["Second man held after sword attack at Buckingham Palace", The Guardian, August 27, 2017]

It's been a busy weekend:

The assault in London came just two hours after a knifeman attacked patrolling soldiers in Brussels in what authorities said was an "attempted terrorist murder". Belgian prosecutors said the attacker yelled "Allahu akbar" when he rushed at the soldiers from behind and struck them with a knife, prompting one of them to open fire. The assailant -- a Belgian national of Somali origin born in 1987 -- was shot and died shortly afterwards in hospital, a prosecutors' statement said. Granted Belgian nationality in 2015 after arriving in the country in 2004, he was not known for any terror-related activities, although he had an assault and battery charge from February on his record, authorities confirmed. Police later raided his home in Bruges, in northwest Belgium. One of the soldiers was slightly hurt in the attack which Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said had been carried out by a "lone individual"... [AFP (France), August 27, 2017]

The Independent UK on Saturday adds that the Brussels stabber

"was in the possession of a firearm replica and two Quran books... The federal prosecutor’s office has handed the investigation to a specialist anti-terrorist judge and the case has been classed as “attempted terrorist murder”.

From Gaza, a religious leader who preaches the kind of attack
Europeans are now experiencing [Image Source]

The same article goes on to speculate on root causes:

Isis has been intensifying calls for terror attacks on the countries bombing it as part of the US-led coalition, issuing detailed advice on carrying out stabbings, vehicle rammings and making explosives.
Officials, including [British] security minister Ben Wallace, have warned that the threat is increasing as Isis loses territory in Iraq and Syria, with the group turning to attacks as a means of maintaining momentum and publicity. “I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate,” Mr Wallace said last week, echoing concerns raised by analysts across Europe.
Brussels was the location of the first Isis-linked attack in Europe, where a militant killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May 2014. [Independent UK]

A handful of tentative conclusions.

• Lone wolf attacks, it's increasingly clear, often turn out to be anything but. 
• And attacks of the kind which began with massive incitement among Palestinian Arabs - in their schools, in their mosques and in the chambers of their political leaders - against Jews in Israel over the past 3 years more and more appear to be replicated on the streets of Europe. The range of their targets has greatly widened.
• For Israelis, it's hard not to notice how quick-witted, fast moving security officials on those European streets are being (entirely correctly) praised while the equivalent actions done in Israel by Israeli security officials have come in for withering criticism in previous years... from Europe.

21-Jun-17: An explosion in a Belgian train station: Do the news agencies realize this was not someone trying to kill himself?

Brussels: The attacker (in the background) and Tuesday's
explosion [Image Source]

Belgium, which has more reason than most other parts of Europe to be deeply concerned about terror-minded Islamists, is trying today to make sense of an explosion in its most important train station yesterday (Tuesday).

Here's how the events were depicted by one of the world's most influential news packagers:

Belgian soldiers have shot a man suspected of being a would-be suicide bomber at Brussels Central Station, officials say. He was shot after reportedly setting off a small explosion and no-one else is believed to have been injured. Prosecutors later said the man had died. They are treating the incident as a terrorist attack. According to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, quoting prosecutors, the man who was shot was wearing a rucksack and a bomb belt. He detonated a device when he attracted the attention of soldiers in the station, the paper says. ["Suspected suicide bomber shot at Brussels railway station", BBC, June 20, 2017]

They're careful, the BBC people. But careful readers will be left wondering about what isn't stated.

• If the man was going to commit suicide, why in a public place? Could it be that suicide was not actually his goal? Was he actually a murderer? Or a murder-minded terrorist? If so, why confuse and mislead by saying he was committing suicide? He made himself into a human bomb and that is what we owe to ourselves and victims past and future to call him and those like him. We explain the thinking here: "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs".
• And by the way, the bomb's effect appears to have been enhanced by nails, making it "similar to the bombs used in the attacks at Brussels airport and on the city's metro that killed 32 people in March 2016." That's from Reuters mid-Wednesday morning (here). Those nails, in our view, are far more relevant and important to characterizing the killer than calling him "suicide bomber", a term we utterly abhor. They are put into bombs so as to cruelly rip apart the flesh of  the innocent victims. Our daughter was murdered by terrorists who attacked the patrons of a pizzeria in Jerusalem with a nail-and-shrapnel-enhanced bomb.
• The Brussels killer caused a small explosion, and then "later" he died. Did the explosion do him in? Or was it the Belgian soldiers who, at some point in these presumably fast-moving events, opened fire and shot him? The BBC report doesn't say. But clearly once he was shot dead, no one else was going to be hurt by him. That's a very good thing.
• The word "terrorist" gets into this BBC report only because the BBC was able to quote Belgian "prosecutors" who called it that. Does the BBC lack the discernment to be able to characterize terrorists as terrorists? No, of course not; it's self-imposed "know-nothing"-ness as a careful reading read of the politically-hyper-correct BBC "Editorial Guidelines: Language when Reporting Terrorism" shows. The BBC editors have far less difficulty or reluctance reaching conclusions on how to characterize a million and one other things; that's why we think of them as a news-reporting source.

This morning (Wednesday) there are additional details to ponder.

Numerous sources report that the fast-acting Belgians "neutralized" the attacker; it's a word that when Israel uses it (to mean killing or stopping an attacker in the course of a terror attack) attracts criticism of Israel.

The unnamed attacker, called "a Moroccan national who was not wanted for terror offences" [here] , is reported to have been yelling "Allahu Akbar" as he ran towards a soldier.

Reuters, around day-break today. reported that Belgium's counter-terrorism police are "probing the identity" of the man shot dead yesterday by "troops guarding a Brussels railway station after he set off explosives that failed to injure anyone":

• "We consider this a terrorist attack," prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told reporters, declining comment on witness accounts that the man had shouted Islamist slogans before detonating what witnesses said were one or two devices in luggage...
• The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of Nato and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell organised the attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Four months later, associates of those attackers killed 32 people in their home city. Since then, attacks in France, but also in Germany, Sweden and, most recently, in Britain, have been carried out in the name of the Syria-based Islamist militant group by other young men, many of them locals, raising fears of more violence in a city where almost a quarter of the population of 1.2 million are Muslim...
• [S]moke pouring through Central Station and a shared awareness of Islamic State attacks in the city last year and more recently in Britain, France and elsewhere, sent evening commuters racing for cover...
• Witnesses spoke of a man who shouted Islamist slogans, including "Allahu akbar" - God is greater - in Arabic, in an underground area of the station still busy with commuters making their way home and seemed to set off one or two small blasts...
• Rail worker Nicolas Van Herrewegen told Reuters that he was heading downstairs toward the underground platforms that serve long-distance and suburban lines running under the city center. "There was a man shouting, and shouting and shouting," he said. "He was talking about the jihadists and all that and then at some point he shouted: 'Allahu akbar' and blew up the little suitcase he had next to him. People just took off."
• ...As Prime Minister Charles Michel consulted his security advisers, the national alert was maintained at its second highest level. Michel, who convened a National Security Council meeting for 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, tweeted his thanks to the security forces and railway staff for their professionalism and courage. Mainline trains were running through the station by the morning rush hour, but not stopping. The adjacent metro station was open as normal, the transport authorities said. ["Belgium investigates station bomber fatally shot by soldiers", Reuters, June 21, 2017]

We agree with Belgium's prime minister: it's good that his country's security personnel opened fire promptly and, acting with "professionalism and courage", killed the man and neutralized the immediate danger.

We hope Israeli diplomats remind Mr Michel of his welcome plain-spokenness the next time Belgium joins with Israel's critics in absurdly - cheaply - accusing the IDF and Israel's other security forces of "extra-judicial execution" and "disproportionate force". The Belgians don't think they engaged in those problematic behaviours yesterday, and they're right. And so is Israel when its security people put the highest immediate priority on stopping an attacker in the shortest time before he achieves his barbaric goal.

Which, to remind ourselves, is never suicide.

The politically-inspired squeamishness of the BBC notwithstanding, everyone with brains in her head understands that attackers like yesterday's in the Brussels train station and Monday's would-be bomber on Paris' Champs-Elysees (killed when he rammed his car, filled with explosive and weapons, into a French police convoy - no innocent people were injured) are motivated by religious doctrine.

And whether they are genuine lone wolves or working in packs, the inspiration, incitement and encouragement for acts of terror in the most-public places possible overwhelmingly comes from Islamic preachers.

Whether this means terrorism does or does not have something to do with Islam is a non-trivial question if we seriously want to defeat the savages and the dangers they pose to our children and our societies. We're convinced the answer is obvious for anyone thinking outside the blinkers of political correctness about those threats.

18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?

Barghouti, convicted on multiple counts of murder by shooting,

is a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize [Image Source: Arab media]

There are serious efforts underway this week to re-engineer the public image of the convicted Palestinian Arab felon, Marwan Barghouti.

Based on disinformation, partial information and lots of spin, they are directed at concealing the facts of his crimes and imprisonment and putting some wind into the sails of this ambitious man's on/off political career.

Outrageously, the key thing to know about Barghouti, according to one of the world's most influential newspapers which yesterday provided him yesterday with an invaluable op ed platform ["Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons", New York Times, April 17, 2017] to megaphone his extreme views, is that

Source: New York Times

In the following 24 hours, the Times found itself in the midst of a storm of protest. We have little sympathy for how the NYT's public editor summed things up today.

A side issue: Barghouti's English is poor. Yet "his" op ed, datelined Hadarim Prison, is a slickly-written piece of eloquent self-promotion. We think there's a teensie-tiny possibility it was written by professional pubic relations people in his name. But then who pays attention to such trivia when the cause is just so compelling?

Barghouti has an interesting group of admirers who help his self-promotion process move forward. Here are just a few.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the South African church leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, regularly sings Barghouti's praises. On one view, this is exceedingly odd, given how the Nobel committee specifically noted Tutu's own "nonviolent path to liberation" in its citation. So then is Tutu unware of Barghouti's lethal criminality, as widely outlined in the media for anyone who cares to look (for instance Dr Emmanuel Navon's cogently argued "Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti")? No, it does not seem that he is unaware. Instead, like many at that extreme end of the political spectrum, he seems to feel criminality of Barghouti's kind just doesn't count. And to show he means it, he has lately been touting the deeply offensive notion that Barghouti ought to get the same rich prize that Tutu himself did ["Bishop Tutu Nominates Jailed Palestinian Leader Barghouti for Nobel Peace Prize", Michael Friedson, June 8, 2016].

Al Jazeera, referring to the noble hero of the South African struggle to defeat apartheaid, calls Barghouti "the Palestinian Mandela". So do the Ma'an News Agency and a commentator at The Guardian. On the other hand, Le Monde, in the course of an interview with Barghouti, calls the comparison "debatable".

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human rights activist who received the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize and is a leader of the non-violent Latin American Christian group Servicio Paz y Justicia, is another supporter of a Barghouti Nobel [May 2016 source]. So is the parliament of Tunisia [source]. And so are sixteen mayors of towns in France [source] including Valenton and Bergerac (unfortunately we don't know the names of the other metropolises).

A cluster of Belgians, all of them involved in their country's national politics, followed suit and wrote to the Nobel committee in May 2016, improbably calling Barghouti "a peace activist":

“Peace requires the freedom of Marwan Barghouti and of the political prisoners, and more generally the freedom of the Palestinian people living for decades under occupation.”

Thinking logically, we might have surmised that the Belgians meant to exclude homicidal thugs from the list of those to be freed because what possible basis can there be to label such felons "political prisoners"? But then they do seem serious about wanting Barghouti to go to Oslo. So evidently they - like Tutu - don't see a conflict between being (a) a convicted murderer and (b) a peace activist. Sort of like being both a cheese-burger addict and an activist for veganism.

But for those to whom facts and realities still mean something, here's a brief excursion through the contemporary reports that accompanied his journey into the Israeli penal system. To emphasize the point, we refer to news reports carried by Haaretz which is much closer to Tutu's views than to ours.

The capture:

Wiretapping revealed that Barghouti was hiding in a safe house. The commander of the army’s Ramallah Brigade... told Haaretz: “When the intelligence arrived that he was in a building in the heart of a Ramallah neighborhood... an armored brigade surrounded the site and the baton was passed to me. The Duvdevan unit was under my command. We understood that he was in the building. One of the soldiers saw him through the window, taking cover close to what looked to us, at least, like an old woman who was lying on a bed. We removed everyone from the building... ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

The conviction

The Tel Aviv District Court convicted former West Bank Tanzim commander Marwan Barghouti in the deaths of five people on Thursday. Barghouti was convicted of three terror attacks in which the five were murdered, as well as in another charge of attempted murder, membership in a terror organization and conspiring to commit a crime. However, the court acquitted him of 33 other murders with which he was charged, noting that there was no evidence that he was a full partner to those incidents...  The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack. The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma'aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said. The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem... [He] was charged with leading dozens of terror operations against Israeli targets since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including suicide and shooting attacks that led to the death and injury of hundreds of Israeli citizens and Israel Defense Force soldiers. According to the charge sheet, Barghouti headed the Fatah, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade terror groups in the West Bank and was subordinate to Arafat... The state prosecutor said Barghouti funded and planned terror attacks and is not the political activist he claimed to be... Barghouti's supporters in the European parliament were expected to show up for the ruling... ["Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People", Haaretz, May 20, 2004]

Barghouti was sentenced by judges Sarah Sirota, Amiram Benyamini and Avraham Tal to five consecutive life terms plus an additional 40 years. The judges observed that

Barghouti used to receive reports of the attacks carried out by his associates only after they were completed. This was an effort to preserve his image as a political leader not involved in armed attacks against Israelis... [Haaretz, June 6, 2004] 

And some occasionally overlooked points, via JTA:

When Israeli authorities chose to put Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti on trial in a criminal court rather than a military court, prosecutors may have set the stage for an even bigger prize: Yasser Arafat. That possibility was given a boost last week with Barghouti’s conviction on five counts of murder, for Israelis killed in three separate shooting ambushes... The judges said Barghouti could be convicted only in cases where it was proven that he had prior knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks and that he approved the attacks... [He] was acquitted on 21 other counts of murder for lack of evidence. Both outcomes bolstered the argument for putting Palestinian terrorists on trial in regular Israeli courts rather than in military courts, where the standards of evidence are not as strict. Barghouti’s conviction shows that there is sufficient evidence to put terrorists behind bars using standard criminal procedures, and his acquittal on the other counts lends legitimacy to the argument that even Palestinian terrorists will get fair trials in Israel... ["Barghouti conviction could foretell Arafat trial", JTA, May 24, 2004]

Some additional overlooked dimensions:

• Marwan Barghouti publicly boasted of his role in igniting what many call the Second Intifada in 2000. We published his direct quotes (translated to English at the archived Wayback Machine]. This may come as a surprise to those who think of Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount in September 2000 as being the real story. 
• He personally laid out $500 [source: the archived Wayback Machine quoting a November 30, 2004 Margot Dudkevitch report in the Jerusalem Post] for the making of the explosive-filled guitar case that was brought to, and exploded inside, Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria destroying it on August 9, 2001 and killing fifteen innocent people including our daughter Malki. The bombmaker was Abdullah Barghouti, Marwan's clansman.
• We sat through Marwan Barghouti's trial in a Tel Aviv court.
• When another clansman Bilal Barghouti, a senior Hamas operative, was on the run from the Israeli security forces because of his involvement in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria (he was later convicted for his part), Marwan Barghouti sheltered him for a time in his home. Bilal Barghouti said for the record that, during his stay there, "he saw a number of weapons, and when he left the house Barghouti armed him with a gun for his use." [Source: CAMERA] Marwan Barghouti is an unindicted accessory after the fact to the Sbarro murders.
• And since we're mentioning the Barghouti clan, let the record show that Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Hamas agent who boasts of taking the central role in the 2001 Sbarro massacre and who faces terrorism charges in Washington that were made public on March 14, 2017, is the daughter of a woman named Hasna al-Barghouti [Arabic source]

Leader and parliamentarian, battler for non-violence and peace, candidate for the world's most important reward for bringing peace to the world. And also a cold-blooded thug closely directing other thugs. A man happy to appear in public gripping a sub-machine gun as he claims credit for the blood-drenched Intifadeh years from 2000 onwards.

We don't think it's all that difficult to distinguish between Barghouti the plastic-coated fantasy and invention of parts of the media, and Barghouti the loathsome killer of innocents. 

In the end, it seems to come down - tragically - to whom and what you want to believe.

10-Apr-16: In Europe, jihadists hiding in plain sight

Krayem: His family are "stunned"
[Image Source: A 2015 Swedish blog]

This past Friday afternoon in a corner of Brussels, the Belgian capital, police arrested five people, two of them considered "Europe’s most wanted fugitives" as well as

hardened operatives of ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for both the Brussels attacks on March 22, which killed 32 people, and the Paris attacks on November 13, which killed 130. [TIME Magazine, April 8, 2016]

The two are Mohamed Abrini, 31, and Osama Krayem, 23.

Krayem's background sounds ominously familiar. Raised in Rosengard, a section of the Swedish city of Malmo ["28-Sep-12: Malmo's beleaguered Jews have more to worry about this morning"] whose Jews we described four years ago as living in a state of siege - and which appears to have continued going downhill since then. Associated Press reports this morning that that "Krayem comes from a Palestinian family" and that, despite the violence and bigotry that has put Malmo on the map in the past few years, his family "was stunned by his turn toward extremism" while acknowledging that "many other guys" from the area had become "foreign fighters".

Krayem's victimhood is embellished in that AP report via a quote from a Rosengard social activist who operates a program to help local immigrants integrate into Swedish society: the accused mass-murderer, he says, is

well-known to the local police for multiple criminal activities like thefts [and] was the perfect target for radicalization — no job, no future, no money. [AP, April 9, 2016]

Krayen's recent trajectory closely resembles what is known about several other of the jihadists who carried out the Friday 13th massacre in Paris last November. He joined the ISIS forces in the ongoing Arab-on-Arab Syrian bloodbath. Then, for reasons not yet explained, in September 2015 he managed to sneak back into Europe amid

the mammoth influx of migrants last year, landing on the Greek island of Leros... Carrying a false Syrian passport in the name of Naim El-Hamed, he made his way to a refugee center in Germany, where Salah Abdeslam collected him on Oct. 3 and brought him back to Brussels. [Source]

We have some comments about Abrini that we will post later.

Right now, the most urgent issue these arrests raise is - what conditions made it possible for the surviving members of the Paris jihad attack group to melt into the background in Sweden, France and Belgium and avoid arrest until now, aided, as TIME's commentator put it, by a network of collaborators who hid them during a period of more than four months. They were, after all, the targets of Europe’s biggest manhunt in memory.

23-Mar-16: The morning after Brussels: Reflecting on the responses

When terrorism upends the lives of ordinary people, exacting a price that often ends up being paid over and again for years, its victims sometimes look around to see who, if anyone, understands what they have just been required to start enduring.

People who understand the insult, the pain, the grief, the loss, the sense of outrage and violation. And who understand the measures that victims expect their leaders to take so that something is learned from the awfulness. And so that the likelihood of it happening again, no matter to whom, will be reduced.

That understanding is not always easy to find.

In its place, as some victims of terror including many Israelis (we among them) have learned over the years, come advice and lectures from people who are often, themselves, unaffected in a personal sense by terrorist attacks. That advice, from the perspective of those who have been and often are its target, has frequently taken forms we find surprising, insensitive, unwise and occasionally outrageous.

To equip ourselves with some additional resilience for when the need next arises as it surely will, we have this morning culled a selection of expressions of understanding published in the wake of the savagery that took dozens of lives in Belgium yesterday.

In the selected quotes below, all published in the past 24 hours, much of the sentiment is understandably and thankfully humanitarian and emotional. They include words of encouragement and of outrage; determination and sympathy. (How much of it is genuine and sincere? Since these are politicians, that's not a fair or relevant question to ask.)

As people who have gotten to know terrorism from the victims' standpoint, who are we to deny its value? People reaching out to people, empathizing, sharing what we have in common, understanding, is not only one of the most effective things to do if we want to benefit the other. It's often the only thing that can be done.

Have a look down the list and please ask yourself, as we have today, whether, in each case, you could imagine a similar sentiment being expressed - but with Israel in place of Belgium.

• Washington stands with Belgium in the face of the "outrageous" attacks - Barack Obama, US President  [AFP]
• The Brussels attacks were "yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism."  - Barack Obama, US President  [US News]
• The attacks "have once again shown terrorism's global face." Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu [Associated Press]
• Those responsible for the "despicable" bombings should face justice - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [AFP]
• "His Majesty King Abdullah II condemns the terrorist attacks in Brussels" - Abdullah II, king of Jordan [Twitter]
• "This is a day of tragedy, a black day... [following the] deadliest attacks we have ever seen in Belgium" which were "blind, violent and cowardly... People were just going to work, to school and they have been cut down by the most extreme barbarity." The response? "We will continue to protect liberty, our way of life." - Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel [AFP]
• "Painful day for Brussels and all Europe. In Jordan with FM @NasserJudeh working together on counterterrorism #united" - Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, tweeting from Amman where our daughter's convicted murderer lives freely, unfettered by any counter-terror measures of which we are aware and in flagrant disregard of basic notions of justice [Twitter]. Ms Mogherini broke down in tears [link] at the end of her press conference with the Jordanian foreign minister yesterday. A photograph from some years ago [link] captures her standing Yasser Arafat, suggesting she knows more about terror than most European politicians. 
• "Terrorism knows no borders and is a plague to all of us... Correct education is the right answer to ignorance and extremism." Egypt's leading religious figure, Grand Mufti Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam [Associated Press]
• The terrorist attacks were "cowardly and odious" and Belgium would "respond together with firmness, calmness and dignity" - Philippe, king of the Belgians [ABC]
• The Eiffel Tower will be lit up in the colors of the Belgian flag - Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris [Twitter]
• "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted - and all the world that is concerned." - French president Francois Hollande [Associated Press]
• "What is necessary now is that we show our collective strength and uphold the values of freedom and solidarity." - Dutch King Willem-Alexander [Associated Press]
• We will fight terrorism "with all necessary means" after this "attack on our open democratic society." - The 28 EU leaders in a rare joint statement [AFP]
• The terrorist threat facing countries across Europe is "very real... We will never left these terrorists win." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [AFP]
• "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [Twitter]
• "All solidarity now with EU, Belgium... Terrorists will never win: Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" - German Chancellor Angela Merkel via her chief of staff Peter Altmeier [Twitter]
• "I think we’ve got to recognize that the threat posed by the modern incarnation of terrorism is one that we have to be vigilant against. I know that Americans have every reason to be frightened by what they see." - Hillary Clinton, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Time]
• "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was... Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" - Donald Trump [Twitter]
• The Brussels attacks are "just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam... Radical Islam is at war with us." Ted Cruz, US Republican Party presidential contender [Time Magazine]
• The Brussels attacks are "another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians... [and] a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS." - Bernie Sanders, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Twitter]
• The blasts in Brussels are "a barbaric crime [that] confirms once again that terrorism knows no borders and threatens the peoples all over the world" - Russian President Vladimir Putin [US News]
• "All Australians condemn these cowardly terrorist attacks in Brussels. And the Belgian people have our thoughts, our prayers and our resolute solidarity in this battle against terrorism. They are utterly cowardly attacks, attacking innocent people, but we need to be constantly vigilant, vigilance is the key." - Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister of Australia [The Guardian]
• The beloved Belgian cartoon character Tintin is depicted in tears [AFP]

We continue to scan the online news media for quotable calls by political leaders for Belgium and the EU to exercise compromise, act with reasonableness and restraint, to avoid vengeance, to find a peaceful path, to keep right away from carrying out extrajudicial executions, not to take steps that could further destabilize the situation, to be proportionate in defending themselves from the jihadists.

We plan to let readers know the moment we find them. And yes, we would appreciate your help [send to thisongoingwar at gmail dot com].

22-Mar-16: Belgium's focus on Europe-based jihad just rose several notches

Candles and flowers are laid in tribute to the victims - outside the
Brussels stock exchange today [Image Source]

Just four days after Friday's arrest of an Islamist terrorist, Saleh Abdeslam, in Brussels, the city has found itself in the midst of serious drama... just as the Belgian government says (but only now admits) it expected.

Two massive explosions - one at the main international airport of Brussels at Zaventem a couple of minutes before 8:00 am, and a third in the Maelbeek subway station in the heart of the city a minute or two after 9:00 am -completely paralyzed the Belgian capital today.

At the time we are writing this, the updated count of losses [quoting "Explosions at Brussels Airport and Subway Kill 34", New York Times, today] is that 34 people are killed - 14 at the airport and 20 in the subway station. Many more are injured in the two attacks: more than 90 at the airport and more than 100 in the subway. Reports speak of children, of amputated limbs, of severe burns, and of the likelihood that the numbers will grow.

In the several hours that have passed since the first reports, the local authorities have gathered enough information to confidently define these as terror attacks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, whom we mentioned here just a few days ago ["19-Mar-16: An arrest in Belgium sharpens the focus on Europe-based jihad"] spoke earnestly into national television cameras today, calling the attacks “blind, violent and cowardly.”

The impact on Belgium is wide and ongoing.

• From various reports, we see that Brussels' public transport system is shut down and the entire city is in a kind of lock-down state with residents being told to “stay where you are”, evidently via a government-authorized Twitter message. 
• Eurostar canceled all trains between Brussels and London. Thalys high-speed trains linking dozens of cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands were suspended [NY Times]
• Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has said Belgians should avoid making calls so that the city’s mobile network would not be as saturated as they evidently are, and to communicate via online messages instead. 
• Belgium's federal prosecutor, Frédéric Van Leeuw, says border controls have been strengthened and extra police officers had been mobilized. 
• Belgium’s official terror threat status was raised from three to four - the highest possible value. 
• Telegraph UK reports that the Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders expressed a concern that additional parties responsible for the killings today are still at large. 

There are, predictably, ripple effects that have not yet run their course.

• All flights into and out of the airport were cancelled right after the attack. An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels was diverted to another airport in mid-flight. 
• Staff at Belgium's nuclear power stations have been asked to leave the sites "for their own safety" [Telegraph UK today]. It appears, according to the same source, that several people "were recently caught using a hidden camera to monitor movements at the home of a leading Belgium nuclear research executive. The development suggested that terrorists were preparing to kidnap him in order to gain access to nuclear materials or to get into a power plant." There's another concern: "The explosion of a radioactive so-called dirty bomb is one of the chief fears of the security services and was thought to be a little outlandish until the discovery in Belgium."
• President Barack Obama said this afternoon: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." His Secretary of State, John Kerry, has told Belgium via his spokesperson on Twitter: "We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate." And "The United States stands with the people of Belgium." Donald Trump has said today that France and Belgium and other parts of Europe are "literally disintegrating". He predicts "many more" attacks. "In my opinion this is just the beginning, it's going to get worse and worse," he told Fox News. He reiterated his pledge to shut down America's border to Muslims "until we figure out what is going on... There's something going on. They're not assimilating into society, and there's something different," he said. "It's not our fault, it's their fault," he added, referring to Muslims." [Telegraph UK, today]
• Mr Trump placed some of the blame for the attacks on "no-go zones" in France and Belgium where, he said, police are afraid to enter
• France's president Francois Hollande said the Brussels savagery struck at "the whole of Europe" [AFP, today]. In a NY Times report, he says "Through the Brussels attacks, it is the whole of Europe that is hit". France ordered 1,600 additional police officers to patrol its borders, train stations, airports and ports. The Eiffel Tower will be lit with the colors of Belgium’s flag tonight.
• Pope Francis expressed his condolences [AFP]. The attacks, he said, are "blind violence, which causes so much suffering".

A handful of observations now about the way parts of the media are dealing with the harsh realities:

• Over at the BBC where using the word "terror" in news reports of jihadist barbarism of the sort that plagues our lives here is strictly controlled and mostly avoided [see "7-Aug-13: Political prisoners, political media"], it appears to have been a tumultuous day. Their lead story this morning appeared around 9:00 am London time under the heading "Brussels Zaventem airport and metro explosions 'kill at least 13'" [archived here], and had no mention of the word "terror". We and others noticed and criticized via Twitter which normally has little effect. Today however, some two hours later and with no fanfare or explanation, the same article (with the same URL) was given a new headline: "Brussels explosions: Many dead in airport and metro terror attacks" [archived here]. Fittingly, it calls the attacks terror - as it should.
• And confronted with the hideous horror of the pitiless bombings of ordinary people traveling places, a reporter ("mostly", he says) for The Times of London and The Economist tweets: "One of the ugliest rituals after any attack in Europe is the chorus of "we told you so!" from the Israeli right." That struck us as repugnant. We tweeted back: "That's the most serious fallout? For us, slavish avoidance of word "terror" in some news channels is both uglier and harmful". It fell on deaf ears, of course.
• And from the New York Times today, this cause-and-effect sound-bite:
  Few countries have been more vulnerable [in the wake of the huge influx of "undocumented migrants" as the New York Times delicately calls them] than Belgium. It has an especially high proportion of citizens who have traveled to Iraq, insular Muslim communities that have helped shield jihadists, and security services that have had persistent problems conducting effective counter-terrorism operations... 

A difficult day, and not yet ended.

UPDATE Tuesday March 22, 2016 at 7:30 pm: The Islamic State has claimed the Brussels attacks. The New York Times reports that:

The Islamic State-affiliated news agency has issued a bulletin claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks Tuesday in Brussels. The claim was disseminated on the group’s official channel on Telegram, a social media platform, and picked up by other official ISIS channels on Telegram and on Twitter. “Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State,” the statement says. “Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”

19-Mar-16: An arrest in Belgium sharpens the focus on Europe-based jihad

Police raid in the Molenbeek section of Brussels, Belgium [Image Source]

Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive believed to be the only terrorist to survive after the savage Friday 13th Paris attacks last November, was captured by Belgian police on Friday.

They were tipped-off by a pizzeria owner whose suspicions were raised by an unusually large order: a "lucky break", a Politico analysis called it.

Three members of a family hiding him, named at this stage only as Abid A, Sihane A and Djemila M, have also been detained [The Independent, UK, today].

Abdeslam, it's thought, fled Paris immediately after the coordinated massacres ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"] that took the lives of 130 people at the Stade de France, numerous cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in central Paris. More than 400 others were injured. He got back to Brussels, and successfully eluded a wide and urgent police search over the following months. In parts of the media, he came to be called "the most wanted man in Europe".

Today he was formally charged with "participation in terrorist murder". His lawyer says [The Guardian] he is "collaborating" with Belgian investigators and will fight extradition to France.

Abdeslam is 26, and described as a Belgian-born, French citizen of Moroccan ancestry. Associated Press calls him "a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks... " Elsewhere, it is noted that a brother of Abdeslam's, Ibrahim, was one of the human bomb attackers at the Stade de France, and died there.

His apprehension

could give security and intelligence agencies an opportunity to interrogate Mr. Abdeslam about his ties to the Islamic State and how the attacks were planned and carried out, at a time when officials are saying that the Paris plot might have been larger and more elaborate than first thought. He was arrested three days after the police found his fingerprints in an apartment in another Brussels neighborhood. The authorities gave few details about how they had tracked him down, but the Belgian prosecutor’s office said it had also arrested three members of a family on charges of sheltering him... ["Arrested in Belgium, Suspect in Paris Attacks Plans to Fight Extradition", New York Times, March 19, 2016]

[Image Source: Bloomberg]

His arrest also gives hope to the victims of the Paris atrocities that a process focused on justice may happen. See this response from a French association of terror victims: "Communiqué du MPCT: Un espoir de justice pour les victimes du 13 novembre" (in French). The role of justice in the lives of terror victims is far too often an afterthought.

Molenbeek, the largely Muslim Brussels neighborhood mentioned in that report, and infamous for its crime and unemployment, is regarded (says AFP) as a "European hotbed of Islamist extremism" that "has long been a breeding ground for radicalism". In the week after the November massacres, Aljazeera, in an article headlined "A message from Molenbeek: 'We are not terrorists'", quoted Charles Michel, Belgium's prime minister, saying Molenbeek "was involved in almost every terrorist attack of recent years", and reporting that Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, had pledged to "clean it up". In The Guardian, they called it "the Brussels borough becoming known as Europe's jihadi central".

A long and serious profile in The Atlantic during that same week described how

tiny Belgium has taken on an oversized role in the European theater of jihad. The country has provided a steady flow of fighters to ISIS in the Middle East... Belgium has just 11 million people, and Pew estimated that about 6 percent of the population was Muslim as of 2010. But Belgian and French nationals make up around a quarter of the Europeans who went to fight in Iraq in the mid-2000s... The central figure in Belgian militant Islamism is Fouad Belkacem, a 33-year-old preacher and founder of the group Sharia4Belgium. He was born in Belgium to Moroccan parents, and is a disciple of the British radical Islamist Anjem Choudary... Experts also say it is comparatively easy to acquire illegal guns in Belgium, making it an attractive base for operations... In particular, Belgian jihadism is concentrated in Molenbeek. It’s a neighborhood of nearly 100,000 people in Brussels, northwest of the city center, which has had a large Muslim population for many years. There are 22 known mosques in the district. Molenbeek shares some characteristics with the banlieues in French—densely populated, large immigrant populations, very high unemployment, complaints of inadequate government services, isolation from the central city and corridors of power... Interior Minister Jan Jambon added: “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present.” ["What’s the Matter With Belgium?", November 17, 2016]

Unsurprisingly, the BBC report on the arrest manages, in its customary manner, to not mention the word "terror" once. (The suspect, it says, is wanted in connection with the "Paris attacks".) It quotes the French president Francois Hollande, speaking at a joint press conference with Belgium's prime minister Charles Michel saying he expected Abdeslam

to be extradited to France "as rapidly as possible" [and that] Abdeslam's arrest was an "important moment" but added that it was not the "final conclusion". "We must catch all those who allowed, organised or facilitated these attacks and we realise that they are a lot more numerous than we thought earlier and had identified," he said. [BBC, today]

Abdeslam is taken into custody [Image Source]

Who were those others and what might they have in common? Other sources, but strikingly not the BBC, offer answers. In fact, Hollande spoke of

"confirmed ties between the Paris attackers and Daesh [ISIS] and stressed that the current threat level is very high." [Sputnik, today]

In Molenbeek, meanwhile. there are reports today of ongoing tensions triggered by the arrests and the police activity:

Not only was access disrupted for locals but many are angry about the neighbourhood being labelled a breeding ground for Islamist violence. “They are tarring everyone with the same brush and forgetting that the Moroccan community, that has been here for 40-50 years, works really hard,” said Yacine, a young man from just outside Molenbeek. “To say that it is a jihadist hot-spot here, no! Look for them somewhere else!” [Euronews, today]

Plenty of photos and video clips of what the Express UK calls rocks and "missiles" being hurled at police.

And this from the Wall Street Journal:

Young Muslim men living in the district since the Paris attacks have expressed concern they may have trouble finding jobs because they fear potential employers could discriminate against them based on their Arabic names and because they are registered as living in Molenbeek... ["Brussels Neighborhood of Molenbeek Returns to the Spotlight", WSJ, today"]

 We fear they are right, but also that they are somewhat missing the point.

24-Aug-15: Honor, shame, technology, crime and how they brought down a good, hard-working boy

A French investigator in protective gear gathers evidence on-board the Thalys intercity train on Friday
[Image Source] The role of officials before and during the attack is considerably less clear
or media-covered

This past Friday evening, as we described here ["22-Aug-15: Carnage on a high-speed European train and the quick-thinking that prevented it"], a massacre on board a busy train traveling between two European capitals was narrowly averted, though the gunman managed to get off several shots. Fast-thinking, selfless action on the part of some of the intended victims made all the difference.

This was not a victory for the governments, the authorities or the people responsible for ensuring public security. Quite the opposite - it was a reminder of what happens when security systems fail. And the huge influence of luck and circumstance.

In the past few days, a little more has become known about the attacker. He started out as a question mark, described in vague terms. Now through media enquiries, we know a little more. Some of it is useful. All of it is helpful to understanding how and why terrorism keeps happening, and will keep on doing so.

• First and most important, the intending murderer was "a good boy". His father, Mohamed El Khazzani who lives in Algeciras, Spain and who admits to not having had contact with him "for over a year", says so in a Telegraph UK interview.
• And not only a good boy but a "very hardworking" person who "never talked politics; just football and fishing". In the mosque which his family does not attend, the president of the South Algeciras Muslim community who presides over it knows him. And surprise, surprise, it turns out "He was an ordinary young man, he played football, went fishing, he worked to make a living" [Alarabiya, August 23, 2015].
• But he's evidently also a "good boy" with a serious grievance. Echoing the days of European slave-trading and its horrors, the son "had been brought to France" (father's words, speaking of an able-bodied son in his early twenties) by "a French telecommunications company... to work on a six-month contract that was terminated early." Imagine. The father of this murder-minded gunman knows a felonious scenario when he sees one: "They're criminals in that company, using people like that... After one month they were just kicked out. So now he's in France, not Spain. What is he meant to do? What is he supposed to eat?" Right. The path from that outrage to dead and bleeding bodies on an inter-city train carriage floor is evident to any thinking person possessed of an honour/shame frame of mind.
• Then there's the small matter of the fish-loving lad's actual criminal record. Father says his hardworking good boy was arrested twice in Madrid in 2009 on charges of selling hashish though "he was only carrying a little bit". A British report [Mirror UK, August 22, 2015] quoting the Spanish paper El Pais says that in fact he was arrested for "drugs trafficking, in May and December 2009, and a third time in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta on a warrant issued by a court in Madrid for a drugs offence." It adds that he is subject today to an arrest warrant issued by a different Madrid court, again for a drugs-related offence.
• He gave up smoking hashish when he moved back to his parents' home in 2012, and after that "seemed very calm". [Telegraph UK]
• The father "recycles materials for a living" (meaning he's a scrap dealer, we assume) in Algeciras. He moved there after earlier bringing his family from Morocco to Spain in 2007 and living for a short time in Madrid. Algeciras is a southern port city in Spain with a population of about 120,000. Some 10,000 of them, or about 9%, are Muslims, according to one report [Mirror UK].
• As for the charges of terrorism-inspired attempted murder, the father says the "hardworking" "good boy" was merely "trying to rob passengers". The young lad "is said to be "dumbfounded" by accusations he was planning a terror attack" [AFP]. Because, we're thinking, that would be so wrong.
• As for us, we're dumbfounded too. The son, Ayoub El Khazzani, now 25, was not "only carrying a little bit" on Friday when he boarded the train. He was actually packing (and struggled hard to use) a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol, plenty of ammunition and a box-cutter with which he came close to slicing off the fingers of one of the men who stopped him.
• Prior to Friday's murderous attack (or unfortunate attempted robbery, if we engage in fantasies) he had already been tagged "as an Islamic extremist by intelligence services in Belgium, France, German and Spain" [AFP] 
• The Mirror report says the French authorities had already decided in March 2014 that his "relationship with radical Islam" justified keeping him under watch. Since he was on a train hurtling towards the French capital when he cocked his high-powered gun and prepared to fire at fellow train travelers, one would be excused for wondering what kind of watch he ought to have gotten. And also whether there might one or two other ladies or gentlemen traveling Europe's roads and tracks at this moment, and who are believed to have a "relationship with radical Islam" that warrants them being watched.
• Those authorities had had some opportunities to check him out since, as BBC reports, he visited Spain, Andorra, Belgium, Austria, Germany and France in the past 6 months alone, There is some evidence he also went to Turkey and Syria, but his lawyer says that part is untrue. Naturally we're wondering why that's important to either side.
• Spanish anti-terrorist services are reported [Mirror UK].to have entered Ayoub El Khazzani's data into "the Schengen-area police database" because of a perception that the young man had ties to "religious extremism". Whoever takes care of checking passengers who board international trains in Europe might eventually be asked how the data and the millions of Euros of technology completely failed to trigger any security measures when he board at Brussels South station. 
• And that's before anyone starts asking about the Kalashnikov assault rifle and the other implements of death and destruction that he brought on-board with him.
• In that last point, we think the Mirror report means to refer to the "Schengen Information System" or SIS. Let's take a moment on thaty. SIS is a European inter-government database keeping and accessing information on people "of interest" in matters of national security, border control and law enforcement. It's a phenomenally important tool. 27 countries officially use the SIS data: France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia.
• But if, as reported, Friday's would-be massacre-man was listed there, and still got on-board the train with enough fire power to carry out a world-class act of carnage, something might be a teeny tiny bit wrong with this picture. Was SIS down that day? Is using it optional for security officials? Do any security officials work at Belgium's inter-city train stations watching for suspects or trouble? And who watches the watchers?
• The gunman's lawyer is named as Sophie David by Alarabiya which quotes her saying the client looks ill and malnourished: "[V]ery sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard" but also a person of enormous good fortune who "found the Kalashnikov he had taken onto the train in a park near the Gare du Midi rail station in Brussels where he was in the habit of sleeping..." and, as anyone would, then "decided to get on a train that some other homeless people told him would be full of wealthy people travelling from Amsterdam to Paris and he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery".

This is all probably going to get much clearer soon, especially the part about why it took three quick-witted, selfless and tough travelers to save a carriage full of train passengers while some of the world's most sophisticated anti-terrorism measures - along with the people who operate them and the policies according to which they work - totally and utterly failed. 

Until it does, we're left to muse about the risks we ordinary people take as we walk into stores, board planes and trains, and generally act as if we live in safe and free societies.