Shooter attack in Belgium drives an EU push to toughen border laws
Brussels: Abdesalem Lassoued had been denied residency in four European countries by the time he chased two Swedish men into a building in Brussels this week and gunned them down at close range with a semiautomatic rifle.
The 45-year-old Tunisian arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa in a smuggler’s boat in 2011. He spent jail time in Sweden and was refused entry to Norway. At one point Italy flagged him as a security threat. Two years ago, Belgium rejected his asylum claim and he disappeared off the map.
Until Monday night, that is, when he killed the two Swedes, wounded a third and forced the lockdown of more than 35,000 people in a soccer stadium where they had gathered to watch Belgium play Sweden. In a video posted online, he claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group.
Within days he has become the new face of the European Union’s campaign to toughen border controls, rapidly deport people and allow the police and security agencies to exchange information more efficiently.
“It’s important that those individuals that could be a security threat to our citizens, to our Union, have to be returned forcefully, immediately,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters on Thursday, as EU interior ministers met in Luxembourg.
Only around one in four people whose asylum applications are denied ever leave or are deported from the 27-nation bloc. Often the countries they come from, including Tunisia, are reluctant to take them back.
With EU countries constantly bickering over how to manage migration their differences lie at the heart of one of the bloc’s biggest political crises the European Commission has sought to outsource the challenge.
The EU’s executive branch has helped to seal deals with Turkey and Tunisia to persuade these countries to stop people from the Middle East or Africa not to mention their own nationals from trying to enter Europe, as they did in large numbers in 2015. About 25 countries that people leave or transit to get to Europe are of concern. Egypt is the next country on the list.
