The Federal police created 368 files on foreign terrorist fighters, known as TFTs, last year. That’s 30% more than the 284 files created for the same reasons in 2015, according to data provided in the annual federal police report.
The term FTF describes people that have joined (or want to join) jihadist fighter groups in warzones, or fighters that have returned from these regions.
As it comes after the 22nd of March 2016 attacks, the fight against terrorism is unsurprisingly one of the main issues dealt with in this new annual report.
Police forces are busier because of the threat highlighted by these events. This has seriously tested officers.
It also led to officers being reassigned. The fight against terrorism has taken up a large quantity of the police’s investigative capacity (19%). That’s more than the fight against drugs (11%) and fraud and corruption (10%).
(Source: Belga)
The fight against terrorism has caused the number of arrests for terrorism to nearly double. It went from 205 in 2015 to 372 in 2016.
Another sign of the threat: interventions by teams with dogs trained to sniff out explosives have increased by 70% in the space of a year.
