Othman EB is a man in his thirties from Borgerhout who has been living in Dubai for almost ten years now. The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office is looking for him for cocaine smuggling, but EB denies having anything to do with the underworld. He himself was never convicted in Belgium for drug trafficking. His brother Younes does.
“The affected family is known, there have been incidents before,” says Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA). He fears that there will be more drug-related attacks in his city in the coming months after yesterday’s. But EB wrote to Gazet van Antwerpen that it will cooperate with the police and the judiciary: “we will respond, but not in the way the mayor of Antwerp thinks.”
The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office does not want to confirm for the time being whether the shooting incident is part of the drug environment. However, the facts are currently qualified as murder and an investigating judge has advanced.