Belgium: Security service kept suicide terrorist secret

Three months before Muriel Degauque committed a suicide attack in Iraq, several parliament members were notified that the Belgian intelligence service were on her trail. The Belgian State Security Service made sure that the parliament and Comité I, which supervises the intelligence services, will not know anything about the investigation.

on request of the then senate president Lizin, Comité I began an inspection investigation on August 31, 2006. Though legally the committee had access to all documents and other information, it met a wall of silence this time. The State Security Service and and the military intelligence service ADIV had worked on the Iraq files, each separately, for years. Despite an agreement to work together, they both refused to share their information with each other.

In order to prevent the parliament and the rival intelligence service from inspecting the Degauque file, the State Security Service decided to transfer the file to federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle at the start of Comité I's investigation. From that moment it became a judicial case and was inaccessible to Comité I. The parlimentary controls were in this way cut out of the case.

Source: HLN (Dutch)

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