Intel failure

As Terrorists Cross Borders, Europe Sees Anew That Its Intelligence Does Not

If another example of the failure of European intelligence services to share and act on information about potential terrorists was needed, Wednesday’s identification of the bombers in the deadly Brussels attacks the day before certainly provides it.

At least one of the attackers, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, had been deported byTurkey to the Netherlands last year with a clear indication that he was a jihadist.

“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey told a news conference in Ankara on Wednesday, “the Belgian authorities could not identify a link to terrorism.”