The story of Abdesalem Lassoued, the putative “lone assassin” who killed two Swedish citizens in Brussels in the name of ISIS on Oct. 16, seems to follow a scripted template. Lassoued was well known to a half-dozen European police agencies. He was a convicted felon in Tunisia and wanted by Tunisian justice when he illegally reached Lampedusa, Italy, in 2011. He was committed to a center in Turin, where he was given a “humanitarian” permit. His destination was Northern Europe.
He popped up in Sweden, where he tried to achieve political asylum. Swedish authorities sent him back to Italy, as per Dublin rules. Lassoued stayed in Italy, where police spotted him in Bologna in 2016 and Genoa in 2021. The Italian police sent reports to all European police agencies, including in Belgium, Great Britain and Sweden, warning about him as a radical Islamist.
In 2019, Belgian police arrested Lassoued and tried to send him back to Italy. But at the end of the bureaucratic procedures in 2020, Italian authorities rejected him as his temporary permit had expired. Lassoued stayed in Belgium.
