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Deadly attack in Belgium ignites fierce debate on failures of deportation policy_我的网站

一 |     BRUSSELS -- The alleged attacker who killed two Swedish soccer fans in Brussels this week before he was shot dead by police was residing in Belgium illegally and should have left the country three years ago, but never did.In a country that has been repeatedly rocked by extremist attacks, the government’s inability to deport the 45-year-old Tunisian national and prevent him from carrying out the attack is sparking a fierce political debate.Many questions remained unanswered as Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson traveled to Brussels on Wednesday to attend a ceremony paying tribute to the victims and meet his Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo. How was a man who was on police files, thought to be radicalized and being sought for deportation, able to remain on Belgian soil? How did he obtain a semiautomatic rifle and launch such an attack?Investigators are still trying to determine the motive for Monday night’s attack, which happened not far from where Belgium’s men’s soccer team was hosting Sweden in a European Championships qualifier. It was the latest of a long list of extremist attacks to hit Belgium, including suicide bombings in 2016 that killed 32 people and injured hundreds more in the Brussels subway and airport.Authorities believe the suspect acted alone.Sweden raised its terror alert to the second-highest level in August after a series of public Quran burnings by an Iraqi refugee living in Sweden resulted in threats from Islamic militant groups. Asked if this might be a possible motive in this week's attack, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said it was too early to tell.Put on the backfoot by political rivals quick to condemn the inadequacies of Belgium’s deportation policy, De Croo stressed that orders to quit the Belgian territory need to be better enforced.“An order to leave the territory must become more binding than it is now,” he said. “The people who are not entitled to protection should leave the territory.” “When two people die, the only thing you can say is that things have gone wrong,” De Croo added.He also called for better protection of the European Union's external borders and coordinated return policies across the 27-nation bloc.Kristersson said he did not blame Belgian authorities for their failure to send the suspect back to his country of origin because “we have exactly the same problem in Sweden, with very many people who are declined asylum but refuse to leave.”According to Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne, the suspect was denied asylum in 2020. He had been suspected of involvement in human trafficking, living illegally in Belgium and of being a risk to state security.Nicole de Moor, the secretary of state for asylum and migration, said Belgian authorities had lost track of the suspect after his asylum application was refused because he did not want to be housed in a reception center. Authorities were unable to locate him to organize his deportation.Governments critics, however, pointed out that police were able to quickly find his address and carry out raids at his Brussels flat after the attack. Belgium’s federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw said the shooter was recognized by the video and that people helped to identify the suspect and to track him down.Bernard Clerfayt, a Brussels minister who is also the mayor of the Brussels borough where the killings took place, called for the resignation of de Moor, the migration secretary.“There are thousands and thousands of orders to leave the country that have not been carried out, and what’s more, the procedure makes no provision for tracking down the addresses of all these people,” Clerfayt told La Premiere radio on Wednesday.Van Leeuw, the prosecutor, said Belgian authorities didn’t have much indication about the suspect’s radicalization. They received some intelligence from an unidentified foreign government in 2016 that the man had been radicalized but could not act on it because Belgian authorities were not able to establish it, he said. They saw no signs of radicalization since then. “Radicalization is not a crime either,” he said.Jesper Tengroth, a spokesman for the Swedish Migration Agency, told Swedish public radio that the suspected gunman lived in Sweden from 2012 to 2014 and spent part of that time in prison before being sent to another EU country.Official figures showed that only 5,497 of the 25,292 people who received an order to leave Belgium in 2022 have respected it. According to various estimates, some 150,000 people are currently residing illegally in Belgium. On average in the European Union, only around one in three people whose asylum applications fail ever actually leave. Forced deportations have a dark history in Belgium. In 1998, Samira Adamu, a Nigerian asylum seeker whose application had been rejected, was suffocated to death by security officials on her plane back to Africa after she tried to resist her deportation. The interior minister at the time resigned over the scandal.Theo Francken, a lawmaker from the right-wing Flemish nationalist party N-VA, said Belgian authorities should be stricter with criminals and radicalized individuals. “This must really be the government’s focus. It’s a big mistake not to have done this,” he said.Meanwhile, Swedish public broadcaster SVT identified one of the victims as Patrick Lundström, a 60-year-old who was described by his family as an “incurable football fan” who followed the national team through good times and bad times.The fact that the shooter used a semiautomatic rifle highlighted another serious issue for Belgium — the widespread circulation of weapons in a country that struggles to fight fierce drug trafficking.“Because of drug crime, there is a lot of demand for these kinds of weapons,” Nils Duquet, the director of the Flemish Peace Institute and a weapons expert, told VRT News. "It’s not only serious criminals who get hold of these kinds of weapons these days, but also more minor ones.”___Raf Casert in Brussels contributed.。    WARSAW, Poland -- The majority of voters in Poland's general election supported opposition parties that promised to reverse democratic backsliding and repair the nation's relationship with allies, including the European Union and Ukraine, according to projections Monday.After a bitter and emotional campaign, turnout was projected at almost 73%, the highest level in the country's 34 years of democracy and surpassing the 63% who turned out in the historic 1989 vote that toppled communism. In the city of Wroclaw, the lines were so long that voting continued through the night until nearly 3 a.m.A so-called late exit poll by Ipsos suggested that voters had grown tired of the governing nationalist Law and Justice party after eight years of divisive policies that led to frequent street protests, bitter divisions within families and billions of euros (dollars) in funding held up by the EU over rule of law violations.Poland's currency, the zloty, strengthened against the dollar and the euro on news of the opposition gains.The outcome could also affect ties with neighboring Ukraine, which Poland has supported in the war against Russia's aggression. The good relations soured in September over Ukraine grain entering and affecting Poland's market.The Ipsos poll showed that three centrist opposition parties that campaigned on a promise to reverse the illiberal drift of the government had together secured around 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament, or Sejm, a clear majority.“I am really overjoyed now," Magdalena Chmieluk, a 43-year-old accountant, said Monday morning. The opposition "will form a government and we will finally be able to live in a normal country, for real.”The opposition parties faced many disadvantages in contesting the election, said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw think tank.The governing party mobilized its administrative resources to help itself, including by controlling the election administration and by an unfair division of votes in electoral districts, he said.“This success is even more remarkable knowing that the whole playing field was uneven. The electoral system was really tilted toward the government,” Kucharczyk told The Associated Press. “You could say that the opposition had to fight this election with one hand tied behind its back and they still won.”Still, Poles on Monday were facing weeks of political uncertainty. Law and Justice won more votes than any single party and said it would try to build a new government led by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.“No matter how you look at it, we won,” Law and Justice campaign manager Joachim Brudzinski said Monday in an interview on RMF FM radio.President Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice, must call the first session of the new parliament within 30 days of the election and designate a prime minister to try to build a government. In the meantime, the current government will remain in a caretaker role.The tradition in the democratic era has been for the president to first tap someone from the party with the most votes, but he is not required to do so.It was not clear how Law and Justice could realistically hold onto power, unless it managed to win over some lawmakers from opposition parties, something it did in the past to maintain the thin parliamentary majority it held for eight years. But that seemed unlikely given the large number that would need to change allegiances.The leader of the agrarian PSL party, a frequent kingmaker in past governments, ruled out cooperating with Law and Justice, known in Poland as PiS, after running with the Third Way coalition.“Those who voted for us want change, want a change of government, want PiS removed from power," Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on RMF FM.The Ipsos poll showed Law and Justice with 36.6% of the votes cast; the opposition Civic Coalition, led by former European Council President Donald Tusk, with 31%; the centrist Third Way coalition with 13.5%; the Left party with 8.6%; and the far-right Confederation with 6.4%.The electoral commission said it expected to report the final result Tuesday.Tusk on Sunday evening declared that it was the end of Law and Justice rule and that a new era had begun for Poland.But not all rejoiced over the projected outcome. “I am disappointed with the results but I accept the democratic choice," said Elzbieta Szadur-Urbanska, a 58-year-old psychologist who voted for Law and Justice. “I think my party is also democratic.”Others were concerned about possible obstacles to a smooth transfer of power.The public television broadcaster, TVP, was reporting on Monday that Law and Justice had won the election.Cezary Tomczyk, vice chairman of Tusk’s party, said the governing party would do everything it could to try to maintain power. He called on it to accept the election result, saying it was the will of the people to give power to the opposition.“The nation has spoken,” Tomczyk said. Even if the opposition parties take power, they will face difficulties in putting forward their agenda. The president will have the power to veto new legislation, while the constitutional court, whose role is to ensure that new laws don't violate the basic law, is loyal to the current governing party, Kucharczyk said.“Fixing the relations with the EU in particular will require domestic changes, namely restoring the independence of the judiciary, restoring the rule of law, which is a condition for the EU to release the funding for Poland,” Kucharczyk said. “It will be a very, very prolonged and difficult process."___Associated Press journalists Pietro De Cristofaro, Kwiyeon Ha and Rafal Niedzielski contributed to this report.。

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