Interview: More coordination, financial resources needed to fight terrorism: Belgian senator

Belgium announced on Monday that it would maintain its terror alert at level 4, the highest level possible, for Brussels for Tuesday, a third day in a row.

"Security in my country was either managed in a bad way or it didn't have the financial resources needed. The investments in security are not sufficient," Senator Bertin Mampaka told Xinhua in an exclusive interview sunday evening amid multiple police raids in cental Brussels.

"We should have started to reinforce the police forces two or three years ago," said Mampaka.

Mampaka said terror suspects were free to travel in Europe. "They had the time to travel between Paris and Brussels and go to Germany, and were free to move like in a market. As a citizen, we need to act involving all European countries," he said.

Mampaka said security forces are now focusing more efforts on Molenbeek in Brussels while the terror suspect might have fled to another European country, such as Britain, Holland, or Germany.

"The efforts to find him should be made across the entire Europe, because he could have supports in France as well as in Belgium," he explained, calling for more exchanges of information.

The Belgian senator complained that the secret services have not done enough to follow foreign fighters coming back from Syria.

"The paradox is that the secret services in the developing countries are more efficient than in our democratic countries, while we are very careful with individual freedoms," he said.

Mampaka explained that young people are radicalized because some of them have lost any point of reference and attracted by radical preachings.

"The responsibility for this is collective. If they take to fighting a war that it is not their own war, is it because they don't find a place in our society? This is a question that we have to address," he said.

"I think then that the ghettoization of some areas of our cities is accelerating the radicalization and extremism and we need to fight that," he added.

Mampaka welcomed a proposal to build up an EU secret service.

"Yes, we need an authority which could make the central coordination. Cooperation now is not a luxury it is a necessity and a question of survival," he said. Endit