2023-09-01 14:26:00
Johan Delmulle, held his last mercurial this Friday as Attorney General of Brussels. And for his end of mandate, he first exposed, figures in support, the consequences of the lack of means on the functioning of justice in Brussels.
If only one data had to be retained, let’s take that concerning cases not prosecuted for lack of means. It thus appears that the number of cases not prosecuted for lack of investigative resources increased from 2,839 to 7,307 between 2017 and 2022. That is an increase of 157% in five years. Johan Delmulle also reveals that the Brussels indictment chamber is saturated with examinations of arrest warrants given the high number of people in preventive detention for drug trafficking.
The Attorney General also points out that in the last months of July and August alone, there have been ten new assize cases. During the past judicial year (from September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023), no fewer than 44 new cases were opened in the Brussels district, which we can reasonably expect will one day be brought before the court. of seats. This means that on average, three to four murders or homicides have been committed per month.
In addition to the glaring lack of resources, Johan Delmulle hit the nail on the head by evoking, for the third consecutive year, the situation of the public prosecutor’s office in Brussels, the largest in the country, but still without an officially appointed king’s prosecutor. “Such situations of uncertainty and negligence are unworthy of the rule of law,” he declared in 2022. For this start of the school year, he goes a step further and denounces “a lack of interest, even contempt on the part of certain parties in power, (contempt) which amounts to a form of culpable political abstention”.
“A lawyer is not limited to wearing a toga, writing conclusions and making pleadings. We are a counter-power”
Judicial BHV
To understand why the Brussels public prosecutor’s office is in such a situation, we must go back to the split of the judicial district of Brussels Hal-Vilvoorde (BHV), which was enshrined in a law of 2012 and implemented in 2014. its judgment of 30 June 2014, the Constitutional Court considered that there were not sufficient reasons to justify the linguistic exception and to allow a public prosecutor in Brussels to be necessarily French-speaking.
It remained for the politician to respond to the Court. Either by reinstating a French/Dutch-speaking alternation for the function, or by defending the reasons for which a French-speaking public prosecutor in Brussels was justified (as was adopted for Hal-Vilvoorde where the public prosecutor is automatically Dutch-speaking , despite linguistic facilities). The case never came to fruition. Consequence of this blockage: there has been a legal void since then. Since Jean-Marc Meilleur was already in place, the Constitutional Court planned to maintain the effects of the old law as long as his mandate ran. The former magistrate left office on April 1, 2021. Tim De Wolf has been appointed acting king’s prosecutor, until a replacement is officially appointed. Except that acting temporarily is still in office, and nothing has been done to fill this legal void.
Last year, Johan Delmulle suggested that Parliament take over the file in order to make the necessary legislative changes. A call that has never been heard. “The elaboration of laws is however the main activity of Parliament, plagues the public prosecutor of Brussels. I therefore reiterate here publicly my request for urgency. It is absolutely irresponsible that, for almost two and a half years, the largest and most important prosecutor’s office in the country has been operating without a designated police chief appointed by the Superior Council of the Judiciary and that within the government, and that a judgment of the Constitutional Court is de facto ignored”.
Solutions are possible. You still have to dare to unpack this thorny file which smells of the community crisis…
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