2023-10-19 05:12:00
In the space of five years, the anti-terrorism unit has been halved in Belgium. Today, there are only 89 people left, including 70 investigators.
Tuesday morning, on Bel RTL, Denis Ducarme, MR deputy, complained regarding the lack of police officers responsible for anti-terrorism following the attack in Brussels. According to him, in 2018 there were 167 and less than 100 today.
According to our figures, the DR3, that is to say the anti-terrorism division of the Judicial Police, had 167 people and 143 investigators in 2018. 5 years later, there are only 89 people left, including 70 investigators. This cell has been reduced by half.
For what ? The majority of other investigators were redirected, for example, to the cells fighting once morest drug cartels. It was considered that the Islamic State no longer represented as significant a danger as in 2016. The special budgets allocated to the DR3 were largely reduced or even disappeared.
There are therefore no fewer investigators within the Federal Police, but they are lugged from one section to another. The unions are therefore pleading for more resources but above all more investigators and quickly. Problem: an investigator in the DR3 must be trained between 3 and 5 years.
In addition to the lack of investigators and resources, there is also a lack of state-of-the-art equipment to work effectively. “That’s what people who work on a daily basis say. The computers are a bit old. They’re from 2017. It doesn’t seem that old, but when you work in a specialized sector like the counter -terrorism, you need machines that go fast, and that can do lots of things. They do what they can, and work well with limited resources. That’s the case everywhere, unfortunately.”comments Dominique Demoulin, judicial and terrorism specialist at RTL.
The fight once morest terrorism therefore has fewer investigators because many of them have been moved to other investigation units. “Tomorrow they can switch back to anti-terrorism. I don’t know if that’s ideal. For a time, Islamic terrorism was a bit on the back burner. It never really disappeared, but we no longer had any attacks like those we experienced in March 2016”adds Dominique Demoulin.
Police unions denounce a lack of funding in the fight once morest terrorism. “There were additional budgets that had been allocated in the fight once morest terrorism. These budgets were deleted because they were one-off and allocated by the government. They were revised downwards and sometimes deleted. The SKY-ECC file was something important in Brussels. We had to review the different forces. But we see today that the terrorist area must remain relevant, and not in an ad hoc manner.”estimates Eddy Quaino of the CGSP Police.
Terrorist attack in Brussels
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