BRUSSELS — Belgium wants a European Union agreement with Turkey to monitor the movement of foreign fighters after an airport suicide bomber slipped through the security net.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Thursday that the EU’s executive Commission has agreed to “come up with an arrangement or a convention with the Turks to resolve all this.”
Turkish authorities allowed Brussels bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui to board a flight in Istanbul last summer without an escort and fly to the Netherlands, where he disappeared.
Belgium was informed after Bakraoui was caught near the Syrian border but Ankara only warned it was sending him half an hour before his flight left.
Jambon wants the agreement to stipulate that “if it’s a Belgian, he has to be sent back to Belgium and not the Netherlands.”