Clearly, the watchlist is a dead letter. There are just too many people on it for authorities actually to watch. The Islamic State intends to overwhelm law enforcement and intelligence organizations with so many attacks and plots that they collapse, and they’re well on their way to doing so.
“Brussels attacker had been on US terror watchlist,” al Arabiya, March 26, 2016:
Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the Brussels suicide bombers, was on a US counterterrorism watchlist before the November attacks in Paris and his brother Khalid was put on the list shortly afterward, sources familiar with the matter said.
Reuters previously reported that both brothers had been known to US authorities before the March 18 arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a French national who prosecutors say had a key role in the Paris attacks.
Belgian prosecutors have identified Brahim El Bakraoui as one of two suicide bombers who attacked Brussels’ Zaventem Airport on Tuesday, while they say Khalid El Bakraoui carried out a suicide bombing at Brussels’ Maelbeek Metro station, near European Union headquarters.
Meanwhile, Belgian police arrested three more people on Friday as investigations into Tuesday’s suicide bombings by militants in Brussels threw up more links to killings in Paris last year.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the operation was connected to the arrest in Paris on Thursday of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack.
Nine people in total have been arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swoop on ISIS militants they link both to the Brussels bombings that killed 31 people and to the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130….