Former chief spy blames allies for Brussels terror

A onetime leading intelligence service official condemns western allies who have ridiculed the Belgian secret services after the two terror bombing attacks in Brussels. He claims that Belgian counter-espionage operations have been deliberately weakened at the request of partner services, which are omnipresent in Brussels.

In Magyar Idők, László Földi, who served as operations director of the Hungarian Information Agency (the Intelligence Service) in the 1990s, admits that the Belgian services failed to infiltrate the Islamist cells in Brussels and thus to prevent the March 23 terror attacks. They had, however, warned their government for many years about the risks accumulating in Brussels’ Muslim ghettos. Successive governments refused to listen in order not to appear racist, he suggests. As a result, the security services lowered their guard. Meanwhile, Brussels is “the Eldorado of the spies of the world” and in order not to be hampered in their operations, western allies asked the Belgian government to hold their own services back, which it did by cutting equipment and personnel. In exchange, the foreign services guaranteed Belgium’s own security against hostile threats. After all this, Földi finds it unfair on their part to mock the Belgian services and call them amateurish.

Tags: Brussels, intelligence, ISIS, terrorism