Proposition 54K1752

Proposition visant à instituer une commission d'enquête parlementaire chargée d'examiner les circonstances qui ont conduit aux attentats terroristes du 22 mars 2016 dans l'aéroport de Bruxelles-National et dans la station de métro Maelbeek à Bruxelles, y compris l'évolution et la gestion de la lutte contre le radicalisme et la menace terroriste.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Servais Verherstraeten
Ecolo Jean-Marc Nollet
Groen Kristof Calvo
LE Catherine Fonck
MR Denis Ducarme
N-VA Peter De Roover
Open Vld Patrick Dewael
PS | SP Laurette Onkelinx
Vooruit Meryame Kitir

Submission date

April 11, 2016

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

committee of inquiry secret service judicial inquiry police police cooperation terrorism access to information

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI ∉ Open Vld N-VA MR VB

Voted to reject

PVDA | PTB PP

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

April 14, 2016 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ministers, dear colleagues, on behalf of Mrs. Van Cauter and myself, I will deliver to you the report of the Justice Committee that our assembly has commissioned to examine the two texts you have just mentioned.

I would say that a third could have been joined, namely the proposal submitted at the time by the CDH but which I suggested not to join, given the fact that we had co-signed, with all the groups of this Parliament, the proposal that served as the basis of our discussions, that submitted by all the heads of groups.

Before this discussion, Mr. Dewinter, on behalf of his group, had the opportunity to expose the content of his own proposal. After that, our committee decided to work on the basis of the text submitted by the different heads of groups.

I will not make an inventory of everything that has been said. I recall, however, that a real unanimity emerged on the text submitted to discussion, each of the speakers agreeing to recognize that the particular moment that the country lived justified that the whole of the democratic forces join together to shed light on the tragic events that our country has experienced, their chronology, responsibilities in the collection of intelligence, the application of measures, the follow-up of attacks, the contribution to the victims. Everyone also welcomed the fact that this committee would also have to work on the reasons that prompted citizens who were on our territory to attack, in this very harsh, brutal, wild and dramatic way, what constitutes the basis of our living together and our democratic values.

The committee unanimously adopted the text as submitted. The committee will consist of 17 members elected on a proportionate basis with a substitute, which has triggered a discussion at the head of the various representatives of unrecognized political groups and not members of the Bureau who have all submitted amendments aimed at being able to participate, in one way or another, in the work of the commission of inquiry. This request was not accepted.

The committee has unanimously adopted the text as deposited, also insisting that the report and the recommendations to be attached to it should be deposited by the end of this year.

Mrs. Van Cauter, do you not intervene as rapporteur? I would like to thank Mr Brotcorne.

Three speakers signed up for the meeting. However, Mr Calvo will not intervene, so that I can give the floor to Ms Pas.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, the attacks of March 22 were another declaration of war by radical Islam against the Free West. After the attacks in London, Madrid, the Jewish Museum, Charlie Hebdo, Paris, they formed a new, ⁇ sad highlight in a series of increasingly horrible violent acts.

An investigation committee must be established. Everything must be done, of course, to prevent a new atrocity by Muslim extremists. There must be clarity over the many mistakes and mistakes, there must be answers, preferably quick answers, to the many questions. That is the least you can do for the victims and their families.

That a thorough investigation should be conducted into the terrorist approach in this country, Vlaams Belang has long been convinced of this. Belgium has paid a very high price for the years-long dog policy and for the cordon sanitaire around the public debate about the emerging Islamic terror, as a Dutch newspaper rightly wrote.

In all the attacks I have just listed, there were always links to Brussels. The warnings were legion, but with all of them you have always deceived the messenger.

Vlaams Belang has warned over the past decades and formulated suggestions to prevent such conditions. We have pointed out the consequences of mass immigration and Islamization and the dangers of Islam fanatics. We have asked dozens of questions about the anarchy, impunity and Muslim extremism in Molenbeek alone.

If I now read that colleague Dewael may become the chairman of the investigation committee, then I think that he is absolutely the cut person for that. We just saw how he applies his experience and knowledge of the Rules of the Chamber and he will not let it do so in the committee, to put the right people out of the wind at the right time. I have also experienced this in the Fortis Commission.

Mr. Dewael, you are also an experienced expert on the subject. Unfortunately, I left the documents on my bench, but I have a whole bunch of oral questions that have been asked to you by my former colleagues Laeremans and De Man in your then office as Minister of Interior. There are also questions about Molenbeek at the time of Hind Fraihi. You may still remember that you told us at the time that everything was not so bad.

We have warned about this. Not only did we warn of Muslim extremism in general, we even warned of the brothers El Bakraoui in particular. In 2010, we discussed this not only here, but also in the Brussels Parliament. Then we asked to act harshly against those two brothers, but we were then kept away, literally in all languages. We, and by extension all the Flammers, were then literally dismissed by the PS as a gang of dummers, because we just thought that that same PS would rather ask for harsh punishments for shooting an agent with a Kalashnikov, rather than doing that as a fait divers. I will not remember the quotes that were answered at that time. The FDF said literally: “Vous choquez tous les démocrates de ce parlement.” The then FDF group chairman, Didier Gosuin, stated: “Brussels has the situation better under control than the other cities.”

Before March 22, those words may sound ridiculous, but after March 22, they sound shocking.

The impact of the terrorist network operating in Belgium goes back in time. Youssef Belhadj was one of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004, which killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000. Youssef Belhadj also stayed in Molenbeek. He was also arrested for the attacks in Madrid.

In early 2015, there was a bloody attack on the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The heavy war weapons with which the Kouachi brothers killed 12 innocent people came from Brussels.

Amedy Coulibaly, the man who shot down customers in a Jewish supermarket in Paris, had also bought his weapons in Molenbeek.

Ayoub el-Khazzani, who stepped on the Thalys in Brussels with a Kalashnikov, allegedly intending to kill the passengers, also stayed in Molenbeek the months before.

Also the suspected perpetrator of the 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum, Mehdi Nemmouche, lived in Molenbeek, just like some perpetrators of the attacks in Paris in November 2015 and just like Abaaoud, the brain behind the isolated attack in Verviers in January 2015.

I could continue for a long time. The list is long and incomplete.

Colleagues, in January 2016 I already submitted a proposal for the establishment of a parliamentary investigation committee on the terrorist cell in Molenbeek. You do not need an investigative committee.

In early March, it emerged that the counter-terrorism unit of the federal police had already received in 2014 detailed, reliable tips about radicalization and about Abdeslam’s plans to commit an attack, a dossier now being investigated by Committee P.

We then reiterated our call for the establishment of an investigative committee. We then expanded our proposal to look globally into the entire functioning and failure of the services involved in counter-terrorism. But even then, you all found that an investigation committee still wasn’t needed. Apparently, unfortunately, there had to be more horrible attacks, many more deaths, before you were convinced, before you could not do otherwise. Today, we will support the proposal for the establishment of a Parliamentary Investigative Committee. We support any proposal to set up an investigative committee on such a matter of vital importance. There are many questions that need to be answered quickly and clearly. Interesting, useful information related to the onset of the attacks, the actual chronology, the role of the policy due to a lack of investment in police and intelligence services, the failure of the judiciary, the failure of any other governmental agencies related to obtaining intelligence and the flow of information, all these are issues that should and can come to the surface along this path.

Of course, we will support this, but I have no confidence in it. I have no confidence in this investigative committee because key issues cannot even be found in the task description of the investigative committee. The words Islam, open borders, asylum, immigration are not mentioned.

I also have no confidence in it, colleagues, just because of the composition of the investigative committee. The party who first asked for an investigation committee, who first warned and predicted the situation, is denied. We do not have the right to speak. We are not even allowed to attend the closed meetings. In other words, colleagues, you have your hands free to drown the fish. We have seen today to the prime minister’s response about the additional information about the safety of the airport, which should have been better provided, that there is still one big fish being thrown to drown together with all the others: the Galantvis will also be drowned with in that commission.

The umbrella sellers are going to do gold business, just like in the investigation committee on Fortis where everyone did their utmost to put his or her minister out of the wind. You have your hands free to make the way of those umbrellas, of the relativization and of looking further away.

We have, by the way, already received a serious preliminary test of this in the Joint Committee before the Easter holidays following the attacks. Ladies and gentlemen, it was a horrible joke. We then saw a Minister of Home Affairs who brought things down to one man’s mistake, and we saw a Minister of Justice who overrelated everything, even almost taxed it.

The Minister of Justice defended the lax justice policy, a policy of wristbands and shoulder taps, which this government once again sustained with the potpourri 2 in January. The criminal palmares of the brothers El Bakraoui were not as negative as is now proposed, according to Minister Geens in that committee. He repeated three times that Khalid El Bakraoui had spent four-fifths of his sentence, that everything had gone perfectly, that nothing was happening.

Not even half a light sentence after a attempted murder with a war weapon on an agent, as Ibrahim El Bakraoui did, is according to Minister Geens the most normal thing in the world. That cascade of laxity is not even questioned. Unfortunately, this is possible in the surrealistic Belgium.

I have heard and read a lot today and in the last few weeks that research must come without taboo, without political games. Colleagues, I think you repeat this often to convince yourself of it. The proposal that you will approve today is the result of one great political game, it is one great political agreement, which the small factions in this house had to hear from the newspaper. Despite all promised openness and democracy, you have decided between you to allow only the parties with butter on their heads, only the parties with blood on their hands in this investigative committee.

Only those who participate in power or those who have been part of a government majority in recent years are allowed to ask questions there. That is, of course, the best guarantee that the political theatre of that committee will function as one big umbrella. The ideal recipe for a deaf pot, the ideal recipe for a money laundering surgery. This makes it very easy for you to be able to transfer responsibility to an individual public service or to a number of specific officials.

I have not received any explanation for why you do not allow us. Democracy is also unresponsible. If it really is your intention, as you claim yourself, to create clarity, then you should use fundamental criticism, our accumulated expertise, rather than just refrain from fear. As non-voting members, this would be perfectly possible, colleagues, in accordance with the democratic conditions. This has always been the case with research committees in the past.

Colleagues of the majority, why not add some voting members and represent all elected parties in the committee in this way? What do you say about self-proclaimed Democrats? The only argument I can find is that then ⁇ there will really be complete clarity.

I have heard the official argument: not to unnecessarily complicate the work. Colleagues of N-VA, do you think that non-voting members in an investigative committee complicate the work there? Are they not able to make a useful contribution? Then I wonder what you have done so far in that capacity in investigative committees.

Some people extra in a committee to ask critical questions, is that unnecessarily complicate the work? Or would it be the questions we would ask that would unnecessarily complicate the work? What questions would those be? What questions make work in a committee difficult? Questions about negligence and guilty failure of previous governments and of the current government? Questions about decades of disruptive savings for police and security services? The question is why the majority of the so-called security commission of 200 million euros, which was granted in the aftermath of the devastated attack in Verviers, was not spent on the safety of citizens but was used to pay outstanding bills of Justice? Such questions .

Why were our parliamentary questions not taken seriously in recent years, when we talked about the potential danger of IS militants who disguised as asylum seekers are not fleeing war but just coming here to wage war? Why were there no border controls introduced despite the warnings of IS itself that they would stumble the terrorists with the flow of asylum seekers? Who will ask such questions in the investigation committee? Will you do that, Mrs. Van Vaerenbergh? Will Stefan Van Hecke do that? I am convinced of not. There is only one party that would deal with such matters in the committee, you know that too well.

Why could Laachraoui, the perpetrator of the attacks in December 2015 along with Abdeslam, freely and without any problem with the flow of asylum seekers come to Belgium unhindered from Syria, even though they had been on an OCAD list for two years? Why could Abaaoud unhinderedly go to recruit jihadists in Syria and even rejoice about the Belgian federal authorities in an IS propaganda leaflet, precisely because they let him freely travel between Belgium and Syria?

Why can’t I ask why Minister Galant hasn’t answered my questions about the loose recruitment policy in Zaventem for months? Do you want to ask, colleague Duchess? I do not think. Why can’t I ask Mohamed Belkaid, the Algerian man who was shot dead during the search and was illegally in the country? Minister Geens has confirmed at that renowned committee meeting that he was already known to the police for a theft in 2014. If an illegal criminal is caught, he is normally ordered to leave the territory. Why then should I not ask if that man was given such an order, and if so, whether it was obeyed and that man was effectively expelled from the country?

Are all these questions unnecessarily complicating the work, colleagues? I am convinced that this is not the case. These are all questions that you prefer not to be asked. If you prohibit us from asking critical questions in an inquiry committee, then we will have to submit all our questions to the competent ministers and state secretaries, one by one, orally in the standing committees. This may unnecessarily complicate the work of the standing committees, but we have no choice.

Any question that you may not or may not ask or dare not ask in the investigative committee, we will ask the competent ministers, with the means of which we are elected by the people.

In order to give you enough inspiration, to ask some correct questions in the investigative committee, and not just the questions that your own ministers cover, my colleague, Filip Dewinter, will immediately give you some questions from a first set of a hundred questions.

I come to my conclusion. A real investigative committee is needed. We will support them.

However, the task description and composition of the investigation committee is, at least to say, a false start. You have the disadvantage of the doubt whether you will effectively get the bottom stone up, whether you will be able to expose all the mistakes and mistakes in that way, and whether you will prevent the same mistakes and mistakes from repeating in the future.

What I ⁇ don’t believe in at all is that you in the investigative committee will have the courage to point out all the political responsibilities.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have one last call.

Madame Pas, do you have a moment?

Can I ask the members to keep the silence or at least produce less noise?

Mr. Speaker, it is symbolic for the road-watching behavior in this matter, which we have been experiencing for decades.

Sometimes it happens to others that I have to ask for silence.

It is precisely by looking away from the decades, by never daring to call the problem by name and by crushing the messenger, that you have let it all go so far. Let that penetrate you.

Mr. Speaker, despite the fact that politics still prefer to look away and talk about other matters, I would still like to make a final call to approve the amendment that we have submitted in the committee and that we will again submit here in the plenary session.

The amendment aims, democratically, to give all elected parties the right to speak in the committee and to delegate them in the committee. In this way, our expertise and criticism can be used. Only in this way can you truly create clarity, because otherwise the commission becomes a measure for nothing and serves as a big umbrella.

With the events of recent weeks, the attacks in Brussels, it is more than necessary to set up a parliamentary committee. However, I do not understand that the parties proposing to set up such a committee today decide to deliberately exclude the Labour Party. What is the problem when we sit in the committee and ask questions? What are you afraid of?

The PVDA asks questions and receives answers in many committees, but in this committee on the attacks the PVDA is not allowed to enter. I have not yet heard a single argument why the PVDA should not sit in the committee, Mr. Speaker.

As you know, we are asking a lot of annoying questions in terms of taxation and about the social recession you are organizing in this country. We will also ask annoying questions about what has gone wrong with the various attacks in Brussels and with the various services that have not done their job. That is what it is about. This is the debate today.

We are talking about Mrs. Galant. There are problems at Zaventem airport. There are problems in the field of security. Then it is immediately said that those questions cannot be addressed here. Where can these questions be addressed? in the Doofpot Commission. That is very easy. Every time an annoying question is asked, it goes directly to that committee where the traditional parties begin to discuss quietly with each other and where other parties are kept out.

This is not the way. Why does it not go? Because the people ask questions. People want those questions to be asked in the committee. You just think: we leave that other group out and we argue with each other. This is not the way. We will not let ourselves do. We will ask questions. We will put them out there. We want answers to our questions. We want to know why someone like El Bakraoui simply returns from Syria via Schiphol and simply enters here. How can that? Where did this information come from?

The people also want to know why millions are spent to place hundreds of soldiers everywhere on the roads and in every corner of the stations, while everyone knows that this is useless.

People want to know why one has so much information, but nothing happens to it. Investigative judges say they get a lot of information but they can’t judge it and they don’t know what to do with it. Today it is proposed to create three more databases, containing millions of data. Where we take the plane and where we drive comes into a large database, but no one knows what to do with it.

That is what we are talking about, today. These are the questions we want to ask in the committee. Today, however, you will decide that we are not allowed to ask those questions. That is undemocratic! In this way you will ⁇ not be able to convince the people that no mistakes have been made.

I have 5 minutes of speech to convince you that we have the right to sit in that committee, but I will not be able to do that, I am sure.

We have looked at how such debates have been conducted in the past. What do I see, dear colleagues of the N-VA? In 1996, Mr. Geert Bourgeois, who now leads the Flemish region, submitted an amendment, a really good amendment.

Mr. Bourgeois found it annoying that he was not allowed to sit in a committee. The N-VA was not so big at the time. He did not find it right. He said that it could be that N-VA, then with five group members, could not sit in the committee. What did Geert Bourgeois do in 1996? He submitted an amendment to get the right to sit in that committee. It was a brilliant idea, Geert!

We of the PVDA found that Geert Bourgeois’s amendment so brilliant that we also wanted to submit it. I found his logic very good. We are not a big party yet, but in 2019 we will be bigger. In the meantime, however, we submit our first amendment, the bourgeois amendment, which takes over the arguments of Mr. Bourgeois.

I will read it for a moment.

What he said when he was still a little fighting and part of a small party, I quote: “The establishment of investigative committees must not result in the right to research being held within a very limited group. This seems to be democratically irresponsible.” – Geert He believes that every member of the Chamber should not only have the right to attend the work, but also to participate effectively in it. That is a politician! That is the matter.

In 1996 all the parties were in the investigation committee. What do I hear about N-VA today? No, we will not approve this. We are now bigger and we want to keep those officials out of the investigation committee. It is not so! That is not democratic!

For that reason, today we would like to ask Parliament to grant the Labour Party access to that inquiry committee to ask its questions.

Basically, we have the right to ask questions and you put us out without anything to be said! This is not a question of voting, but of the right to speak. We will only have the right to sit in the committee to listen.

Now, as soon as there is an important debate on the political level, as with Ms Galant, the prime minister’s first thought is to send the discussion back to the counter-terrorism committee or to the committee related to the Brussels attacks, which we will not attend. It is the Prime Minister who decides what will be discussed in the Commission.

This is not right and that is why I would like to call for an amendment that allows at least one representative per party to be present here. We are not obliged to agree with each other, but this is the case in all committees!

Within this commission of inquiry, crucial in light of what has happened in recent weeks, why ⁇ ’t this democratic right not be granted to all parties? I hope that individuals from different political groups will support me in the face of this injustice and vote for this amendment.

I will not ride on my big horses like Mr. President. Hedebouw, but I would nevertheless like to justify our amendment because it seems important to me. In fact, we feel a profound injustice even when it comes to discussing problems arising following the attacks in Brussels.

It is urgent that light is made on all possible malfunctions observed in our judicial, security and intelligence services. The statements of your Ministers of Interior and Justice in committees gathered on 25 March suggested that the responsibilities were individual and not collective, that the budget allocated to these services by the government was sufficient to adequately and optimally respond to the challenge of the fight against terrorism.

The parliamentary commission of inquiry, whose constitution we support, will have to confirm or deny these statements and this, in a total objectivity and without any ambiguity, of any party taken. However, we have found, at the conclusion of the various Conference of Presidents, that this proposal is intended to exclude my party from the right to actively participate in the parliamentary inquiry, in the absence of a political group of at least five MEPs. The proposal thus reduces small parties to their most restricted right in parliamentary investigation, namely the right to attend the work without being able to participate in it. This is very frustrating!

The law of 3 May 1880 on parliamentary inquiries, which stipulates that "every member of the House has the right to attend the commission's investigation", authorizes the House, however, to arrange the composition of any commission it would set up. Furthermore, there is no rule of jurisprudence to exclude certain parties from the work.

I attended the Justice Commission on Tuesday and I must confess that by listening to the hate speeches of the greatest of the four so-called parties, I can understand the reluctance, both of the majority and of the opposition, to allow this party to take part in the work of the Investigative Commission, as they are unworthy of the objective and serene work that must prevail in the commission, in the memory of the victims of the attacks.

However, I must emphasize that this exclusion is aimed at other parties that are, in fact, democratic. Such exclusion is all the more inopportune as my party, through its management of fire and rescue services following the attacks of March 22, has been directly confronted with the reality of emergencies, victims, deaths, wounded and suffering.

As for my colleague Mr. Olivier Maingain, no one can deny his unfailing involvement within the Justice and Interior Commissions for now twenty-five years. I find it so regrettable that you are passing away from such parliamentary expertise.

The amendment that my party is presenting again today is therefore aimed at allowing small parties to participate in the work of the inquiry committee, exactly as is done for traditional parliamentary committees, that is, without a deliberative vote. We don’t even ask to vote, just to be able to intervene, ask questions and be heard.

In these times or the national union should take all its meaning, so I call on all democratic parties to support our amendment in soul and conscience. You are never obliged to follow your party altogether if you want to react differently. Some people may understand our point of view and our desire to participate in this work.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, assume that an accused is brought up by the Prosecutor’s Office and is considered by the Prosecutor’s Office to be sentenced to the most severe punishment. What would the victim of the crime find of it if the accused could compose the jury himself? Not only the victim, but every right-wing Democrat in a democratic rule of law would rightly scream murder and fire. It is not appropriate for the accused to compose the jury himself. The jury must be objective and neutral.

Especially in a Parliament where every member of Parliament is considered to have the same rights and duties, it seems to me logical and obvious that every member of Parliament is given the opportunity, in any committee, and ⁇ in an investigative committee, to ask the questions he wishes to ask on behalf of the voters he represents. This is what ultimately turns into a democracy. There are no first, second and third members. Everyone has the same rights and should have the same opportunities. However, this is not the case for the investigation committee that is now being established.

Do I thus hold a plea pro domo, for our party, the Flemish Interest, for my colleagues or for myself? Is it a pretext to allow the PVDA, the PTB or DéFI into that committee? In a sense yes. Above all, it is a plea to ensure that all questions can be asked, that all questions that live with the public opinion can be addressed in that committee. That is the essence. The essence is not that my party should sit in that committee and that we should also be able to get something said, because otherwise we would miss the publicity that such a committee brings with it. The essence is that all the voices of the public opinion, of whatever direction they may be, left or right, Maoist, Franco-speaking, Belgian or right Flemish-national, must be heard, especially on such a sensitive topic as Muslim terrorism, which will eventually be discussed in that committee. However, some of those votes will not be heard.

We do not know what will be dealt with. On the questions that will be asked, we will have to wait a moment. That will depend on the competence, efficiency and political will of those who will be part of that committee.

The chairman of the committee has butter on his head as a former Minister of the Interior in the period preceding the terrorist acts and bears political responsibility. The question is how much such a person can lead this committee.

Mr. Dewael, during a trial, a good lawyer might wreck such a jury member and say that that person cannot be the chairman of this committee since he himself bears responsibility. He may even, who knows, be a complicit. This will have to be demonstrated by the Commission.

Who will be the chairman of this committee? In particular, the former Minister of Internal Affairs, who, in the wake of the facts, has taken political decisions on the subject, several of which, as instructed by my colleague Mrs. Pas, are at least in question.

And yet we do that, in this temple of democracy, in the wake of an investigative committee that must work purifyingly and that must make the processing process start with the public opinion, with the population.

Is it so surprising that a number of parties banned from this investigation committee speak of a doofpot commission? Is it so surprising that already a part of the population has the impression that some questions, but especially some other questions, will not be asked in this committee?

I said it already, on the questions that may be asked, we will have to wait and that will depend on the competence, efficiency and political will of those who are part of the committee.

At least I know which questions will not be asked. Therefore, we make an attempt to briefly present to you some of the questions that we would have asked, but only bundled and summarized from this tribune.

With 42 Syrian fighters per 1 million inhabitants, our country is the Western European country with currently the far highest percentage of Syrian fighters on our continent. We know that 559 Syrian fighters from our country have gone there fighting. Most of them are affiliated with IS or the al-Nusra Front, say Al Qaeda. 90 of them have been killed. 270 criminal investigations are underway and ⁇ 140 fighters have returned. Less than half of the returned Syrian fighters are actively monitored by our police services. Forty are monitored and actively monitored. A small minority has been persecuted, convicted and imprisoned.

The vast majority, even today, still runs freely around in our country. Just then your servant has asked the Minister of Justice how it is possible that such a Syrian fighter, who was suspected and arrested for, in all probability, complicity – he has not yet been convicted, so let us wait for a moment – has been running around his leg for two years with a single band. This may limit his freedom of movement, but at least it does not limit him in conspiring and participating in terrorist acts, as it turns out.

I note that a total of 80 of those Syrian fighters were recruited by a long bearded carnival club. Thus, Sharia4Belgium was once described by a minister on this address. On Sharia4Belgium, the former Director-General of State Security, Alain Winants, made a few statements today. Meanwhile, Mr. Dewael went on a walk. I can understand that, but you must question Mr Winants, undoubtedly behind closed doors. He was Director-General of State Security between 2006 and 2014. The general directors of the State Security are not always my best friends, but Mr. Winants knows how to tell.

As he says today in a number of media: “No government has eventually taken radicalization seriously. I have warned countless times about Sharia4Belgium, but I received from the government the message that it was clowns with long beards." This is an interesting statement from the great head of state security. They were clowns with long beards. And yet, between 2010-2011 and 2014, Sharia4Belgium has been able to recruit more than 80 recruits for the jihad in our country.

Sharia4Belgium is worthy of an interesting case study, about how the policy, past governments and also the current government, have dealt with the process of radicalization, which has led to the recruitment of Muslim terrorists and to the attacks in our country and elsewhere in Europe.

I know Sharia4Belgium relatively well. I have known our friend Fouad Belkacem, better known under his nickname Abu Imran, as the leader of Sharia4Belgium to be active in my city, in Antwerp, and then in Boom. I know the social worker in Boom who has warned, the man has written a book about it. He warned of the phenomenon Sharia4Belgium and of Mr. Belkacem and his troops. He was laughed at and fired as a social worker. You should definitely invite him into your investigative committee and ask about his experiences, especially his experiences with the way the policy responded to the phenomenon in 2008-2009-2010.

Sharia4Belgium was allowed to do anything in Antwerp, waving the flag of Islamic State, protesting in front of the prison in Beginiensstraat when the Sharia sisters and brothers were temporarily arrested. Sharia4Belgium was allowed to organize daws on the Meir and the De Keyserlei in Antwerp to collect new recruits.

It was the socialist mayor of Antwerp, in the meantime manager of SK Genk – he too has walked, which I can understand in his case, and has escaped his political responsibilities – who always sought us to make those carnival games and wondered what we were doing. Mr. Bonte, you who today so high from the tower blasts about radicalization, if you want to know what is going on with radicalization, ask Mr. Patrick Janssens to come to your investigative committee. Put it on the rooster, Mr. Bonte. You will hear how socialist mayors, which you always complain about, dealt with the radicalization process in Antwerp. Eighty jihadists have gone to Syria from my city and from other parts of this country via Sharia4Belgium and have returned here to be the murder machines we experienced in the attacks in Brussels.

But it wasn’t all that bad, it couldn’t all hurt. You should also ask the investigative judges who have been involved in this in Antwerp: it took until 2014 before a condemnation of Sharia4Belgium came, before 44 defendants were convicted before the court in Antwerp and the conclusion was reached that Sharia4Belgium was a terrorist organization. I give you the advice, ladies and gentlemen of the investigation committee, how many of the 44 convicted at the time of the conviction were still present in our country. There were four. All the rest had, meanwhile, been drawn toward Syria, thanks to the incredibly lax dog policy of the successive governments, the current inclusive.

These are some of the topics and topics that I would like to have discussed in the research committee once. I know that they may not be addressed because they are politically sensitive, because they are politically incorrect, because they do not fit in the image you want to hang after the attacks in our country.

The next topic I would like to discuss briefly is the way in which the Syrian fighters were eventually followed, and how in the end they failed to stop the Syrian fighters who travel over and over between Syria, Turkey and our country, including notorious terrorists, when they want to re-entry our country.

140 Syrian fighters have returned to our country; 40 are being monitored.

We note that Syrian fighters are active in a particular country. Syrian fighters are mostly active in Syria. What does our government do? He has no contact with the authorities in Syria. He has no contact with the authorities in Syria. In particular, she does not speak to the intelligence and security services and the army that fights on the ground in Syria against Islamic State and the Jabath al-Nusra Front.

On the contrary, we ethnicise the regime and do not talk to it. We do not exchange any information. We do not have any contact with them and therefore we do not know approximately how it is with those people, what they do, what their intentions are, how many are there in prison and to what extent there is a possibility to cooperate at least with those on the ground, not in theory or in a committee, fighting Islamic State.

It goes even further than that. The Open Vld faction has now completely disappeared and I can understand that. Who was ultimately the one who called in 2011, 2012 and 2013 to arm the Syrian resistance? Was that not the former great leader of the Open Vld, Guy Verhofstadt? He has invited the leader of the Syrian resistance, Mr. Idriss, to meet with him in the European Parliament. Have we forgotten all this? On television, he called for the Syrian resistance to be armed.

Did he do it at a time when there was no IS? Absolutely not ! He did this at a time when IS was busy putting the so-called legitimate resistance in Syria in his pocket, and physically and militarily dismantling it. To whom would all the weapons that Mr. Verhofstadt so urgently wanted to deliver to the Syrian resistance go? Are they the same weapons, ladies and gentlemen of Open Vld, with which now innocent civilians are carved down on the streets of Europe? Were it Mr. Verhofstadt’s explosives that were to be delivered to the Syrian resistance in 2012 and 2013 that exploded at Brussels Airport?

I would have liked to have questioned Mr Verhofstadt on this one time in the investigation committee. I would have liked to know with whom in Syria he had all contact, to whom he wanted to deliver all those weapons, how far those contacts of Mr. Verhofstadt went. This may also be a topic that will not be discussed in this investigation committee.

Then we could ask Mr. Moureaux and a few others from the PS group, mayors of Brussels. I would like to know what their relationship is with radical Salafist organizations and movements in this country.

I would like to know what the relationship of some ministers here in this room and ⁇ past ministers with the regime in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is. I would have very much liked to invite Mr. Reynders into the investigation committee to hear what he thinks of that kind of regimes that behind the scenes support the Muslim terrorism of Al-Qaeda, the Al-Nusrafront and relatives and what are the links between the Belgian government and such regimes that with money and resources actively support terrorism. However, I do not think that Minister Reynders will also be put on the row in this committee.

I would also have liked to hear the successive ministers responsible for immigration in this country in the investigative committee to hear what their position is about unrestricted immigration, the asylum flow, the migration invasion into our country, which has allowed us to now have almost over 500,000 Muslims on our territory, of which we know that at least one in three, as is the case in the Muslim world, adheres to salafism, wahabism or and jihadism, and what has been done in the past to counter those more than 150 radicalised mosques.

What has been done to counter all those hatred preachers that we have seen pass the review here for years, up to the great leader of Sharia4UK, Mr. Choudary?

When we addressed this in a cultural centre of the city of Antwerp, Mr. Janssens, your socialist mayor, asked what we were doing, and pointed out that there was freedom of expression, also for Mr. Choudary, the great leader of Sharia4UK, who was allowed to rush up to three times in a year time in Antwerp for the jihad. There was no dirt in the air.

We could also ask some relevant questions in the investigation committee.

My half hour is almost exhausted. You are therefore almost away from the difficult and annoying politically correct and incorrect questions and from the invitations to politicians here in the hall and elsewhere to put a hand in your belly before the investigation committee rather than blame by referring to one or another official or to some connection officer somewhere far away at an embassy in Turkey. That will happen; I will give it to you on a sheet. Put your hand in your own belly, instead of getting any director of a security service to resign and then go back to the agenda again.

The enemy is inside the walls. The gates are still wide open.

The essence of the whole story is that the investigation committee will limit itself to cutting the branches of the tree. The investigation committee will limit itself to endless questioning, to hearings up to the end about the details of the whole matter, about who, what, where and at what time which document has passed to which service and about how it happens that a particular document is not included in a given database. You know the whole story.

To drown the fish – noyer le poisson, for our French-speaking friends – that’s what it will end up with. About the essence, namely the link, the essential, obvious link, it will not go.

The only ones who don’t know about it are the members of parliament. In the meantime, the public already knows. You will see that in the upcoming elections. The population knows what you do not know, namely that the link is a link between terrorism and mass immigration. After all, without mass immigration, those hundreds of thousands of Muslims would never have entered the territory of our country. Without those Muslims on the territory of our country, there would be no radicalization, no Islamic radicalism, no salafism, no wahabism, no jihadism.

Ladies and gentlemen, without that radicalization there would therefore be no terrorist organizations that have been able to settle for years in that Islamic community, which have rooted within the oemma.

In the end, today they do not do what they started yesterday, but what they are doing from day one of the mass immigration of non-European Muslims to our country. It is about the link between terror and Islam, about the link between terror and immigration, about the link between terror and the asylum stream. At least 5 to 6 of the 13 terrorists of the attacks in Paris and Brussels have travelled through the asylum stream route not once but sometimes several times in and out of our country to exchange information, to exchange documents, to get instructions and return, to recruit here and return to Syria and vice versa. We have covered it all with the mantle of love. Why did you cover it with the mantle of love? You still believe in that multicultural project. The terrorist attacks are the clearest proof that multiculturalism does not work, is not a harmonious and solidary story but has become a story of harsh confrontation, now also with violence, between cultures and civilizations that are incompatible and will never be compatible.

Ladies and gentlemen, therefore I wish you very much success with your investigative committee, an investigative committee that becomes a doofpot committee, the largest, most dishonest doofpot committee this country will ever know. Your silence during this debate is of course obvious. There is a multicultural, a multicul conspiracy between the traditional parties, there is a multicul conspiracy between CD&V, cdH, N-VA, sp.a, PS, PRL and VLD that at the base of the problem must not, will not and cannot be touched. Therefore, I wish you good luck with your deafpot commission, which will especially hide what is not allowed to be talked about.

We will talk, not in the committee, but on the street, not in this Parliament, but with the man on the street who in the meantime knows much better than you all together what it really is about.