THE response of the Belgian police to the terrorist attacks that claimed 32 lives in Brussels on March 22nd has displayed elements of farce. Two days after the bombings, officers arrested Fayçal Cheffou, a freelance journalist and Islamist agitator, as he loitered with several other men outside the federal prosecutor’s office. He was identified as the “man in the hat” seen on security footage at Brussels’ airport next to the two suicide-bombers. Four days later Mr Cheffou was released due to lack of evidence. Mobile-phone tracking placed him at home during the bombings, and his DNA was not found in the apartment where the bombs were made.
“Belgium is the weakest link in the European Union’s [security] network,” says one EU diplomat. Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the attacks in Paris in November whose arrest seems to have triggered the Brussels bombings, evaded police for four months before he was arrested in Molenbeek, the Brussels suburb where he grew up. Raids leading to his arrest turned up components of explosives, yet security at vulnerable locations was not beefed up. The Belgians had even been warned by foreign intelligence agencies that leaders of Islamic State (IS) in Syria had sent instructions to bomb the airport and a metro station.
Meanwhile, Turkey said it had…