As we have experienced with the football matches Hungary's national team plays, the European Championship is a truly heart-rending celebration. This was desecrated by the socking act of the two cowardly, terrorist gunmen who shot two Swedish fans in the open street in central Brussels shortly before the start of the Belgium-Sweden European Championship qualifier. The match had to be suspended, and the world went into mourning.
The shooting prompted the highest terror alert in Brussels, but action came too late, as in many other cases. The gunmen turned out to be Tunisian immigrants, and one of them even posted a video message before the attack, proudly announcing that he was carrying out the bestial killing in the name of the Islamic State.
However, not only this information was insufficient for the Belgian intelligence, but also the fact that in 2011, one of the perpetrators broke out of prison in Tunisia, where he had been sentenced to 26 years (!) for attempted murder, among other crimes.
We can rightly harbor the suspicion that this was not the only thing on his record, as even in Tunisia 26 years is not a punishment handed out for "petty offences".
The gunman, Abdesalam Lassoud, entered the EU as a migrant and applied for refugee status in several countries, including Norway, Sweden, Italy and Belgium, but his application was rejected in all of the countries. The man was thus at large, coming and going for years in the western half of Europe without anyone realizing the threat he posed. He was only issued a deportation order in 2021, while Tunisia also indicated its request for his extradition. And that was not the end of the tragicomedy in Brussels, as the Belgian authorities began paper-pushing and eventually buried the files on his case in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.