As the aftermath of the Paris tragedy unfolds, it has come to light that Belgian authorities were given a detailed list of suspected terrorists – including the mastermind of the attacks – a month before the atrocity took place.
However, the mayor of the Molenbeek district of Brussels, notorious for harboring jihadists, believes it was not her responsibility to follow up on the information, according to a report by the New York Times.
“What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Francoise Schepmans said in an interview with the paper, adding that these things are “the responsibility of the federal police.”
It is alleged that the mayor had the addresses and names of over 80 suspected militants. The list was based on information from Belgium’s security services, and included both the mastermind of the operation, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and the two brothers, Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, who participated in the November 13 attacks.
Abaaoud was a Molenbeek resident who had left to fight alongside Islamic State (IS/ISIS, formerly ISIL) in the Syrian jihad in early 2014. He was killed in a police raid in Saint-Denis last week, after taking the lives of 130 people in the Paris attacks.
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