Paris and Brussels jihad killers got $56,000 in welfare while planning attacks, by Mark Maremont and Valentina Pop.

Belgian financial investigators looking into recent terror plots have discovered a disturbing trend: Some of the suspects were collecting welfare benefits until shortly before they carried out their attacks.

At least five of the alleged plotters in the Paris and Brussels terror attacks partly financed themselves with payments from Belgium’s generous social-welfare system, authorities have concluded. In total they received more than €50,000, or about $56,000 at today’s rate.

The main surviving Paris suspect, Salah Abdeslam, collected unemployment benefits until three weeks before the November attacks—€19,000 in all, according to people familiar with the case. At the time, he was manager and part-owner of a bar, which Belgian officials say should have made him ineligible.

Analysis from Robert Spencer:

But as far as Abdeslam was his fellow jihadis were concerned, it was their due, since the Qur’an mandates that non-Muslims must pay for the upkeep of Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah … until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).

Or maybe the just think the West is stupid and enfeebled.

FLASHBACK: Aussie jihadists were on the dole, by Simon Benson in Feb 2015.

A federal investigation into the welfare status of Australian foreign fighters … shows 96 per cent had been on welfare benefits when they fled to the Middle East.

Most had continued to collect payments from Australian taxpayers while training with Islamic State to become terrorists intent on wanting to kill Australians.

If you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it.

hat-tip Stephen Neil