Jelle van Buuren in Pauw on Manchester attack
On Tuesday 23 May, Jelle van Buuren, assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, was a guest at the Dutch news programme Pauw. As expert on terrorism he discussed the attack in Manchester at the concert of pop star Ariane Grande.
The director of the security company, Gerard van Duykeren, was also present, together with a father who was at the concert with his daughter. Jeroen Pauw posed the question whether we should get used to never having the full one hundred per cent safety. Van Buuren answered: ‘That should be evident. You should look at this situation and see what went wrong and whether this is something we can solve this for future events. However, you cannot remodel society into a fortress’.
In addition, he mentioned that the power of terrorism is unpredictable. ‘Last time it were attacks on concert halls, then it were attacks using trucks. It seems like the effect of such attacks for IS has expired. They are going for more and more gruesome attacks, like here with young children. However, you cannot guard every public place as if it were an airport. If you do this, you create a slow kind of society and only enforce your own insecurity. Long queues could themselves be a new target.’
Did you miss the broadcast or want to watch it again? (Dutch)