Belgium is the hub of Islamist terror groups. Most of them are of a North African background; they come from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and a huge number have gone and fought in Syria, a lot of them with Isis.
There has obviously been a failure of intelligence in France and there has not been adequate liaison. People say that if we leave the EU, then the terror threat will grow. But we can see the two countries side by side with a lack of intelligence being shared.
How many terror cells are there? We don’t know how many. As far as the UK is concerned there is supposed to be around 800 British Jihadists who have gone to fight in Syria. A number of them will fight for Isis when they come back to the UK.
We have had up to 4,000 people who have gone to terror training camps. So I think that, just because Syria is the current focus, we shouldn’t think that Syria is the only source of terrorism.
What was extraordinary was that the main terror suspect in the Paris attacks did not do very far, he did not flee he stayed in Belgium- right next door.
The Belgiums said they were looking for 5 or 6 terror cells but is a very fluid number of course some were killed in the Paris attacks. Belgium is the hub of European terror and there has been a large turn towards that because we’ve seen things like Molenbeek. Because Belgium is so central, they can travel to other countries and carry out attacks there.
We don’t know the numbers of terrorists for sure, from the UK is it around 800. Belgium sends the largest number of people to Syria, per head of population.
