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'European FBI' should be formed to tackle terrorism, says French politician

Memorials were placed at the scene where suspected terrorists crashed a van into pedestrians at Las Ramblas in Barcelona: REUTERS
Memorials were placed at the scene where suspected terrorists crashed a van into pedestrians at Las Ramblas in Barcelona: REUTERS

A “European FBI” must be formed to tackle terrorism in the wake of the Barcelona attacks, a French politician has urged.

Georges Fenech, a former Les Républicains MP, said collaboration between European countries was imperative following a spate of deadly attacks using similar modus operandi on the continent.

Mr Fenech, a former president of the 2015 inquiry into France’s terror attacks, said Europe was “at war” with terror and called for an overhaul in how the extremist threat is managed.

“Borders no longer exist. It is important we understand the necessity of European collaboration...a proposition that I would put forward would be a kind of European FBI, a real common intelligence base to stop these basically completely unchallenged border crossings. We are moving forward,” he told BFMTV.

“We are arriving late in this war being waged by the jihadists. Today it is Barcelona, tomorrow whose turn will it be? We need to change tack and stop repeating the same old mistakes.”

It comes after Spanish police shot dead five suspected terrorists attempting to carry out an attack in a seaside resort just hours after a van ploughed into crowds on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, killing at least 14 people.

More than a hundred people were injured in the two attacks and detectives say they believe them to be linked.

Authorities believe a cell of at least eight people may have been involved and had been planning to use gas canisters, according to a judicial source.

A similar style of attack was thwarted in Paris last year after a suspected group of Isis supporters abandoned a car filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral.

Officials said they had been planning to attack one of Paris’ largest railway stations.

In July last year, a Tunisian Isis supporter killed 86 people by ploughing a lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, then in December, 12 victims were killed by another Isis militant who drove a lorry into a Berlin Christmas market.

In the first terror attack claimed by Isis in the UK, Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people before stabbing a police officer to death outside the Houses of Parliament in March 2017.

Another attacker hijacked a lorry and drove it down a high street and into a department store in Stockholm in April, killing five people.