2023-10-21 17:22:00
The announcement of the resignation of Vincent Van Quickenborne had the effect of a bomb on Friday evening. The Minister of Justice held an unexpected press conference to confess to having committed “a gross, unacceptable and individual error” in the management of the case of jihadist Abdessalem Lassoued, who shot and killed two Swedish supporters on October 16 in Brussels. Vincent Van Quickenborne explained that in September 2022, an extradition request from Tunisia, Lassoued’s country of origin, arrived at the Brussels prosecutor’s office. But this letter remained unanswered.
Het Laatste Nieuws affirms this Saturday that this file concerning the Tunisian (who was living illegally in Belgium) was “put away in the wrong cabinet” and that the magistrate responsible for international extradition requests at the Brussels prosecutor’s office forgot to deal with this file. This is the only unprocessed request out of the 31 received in 2022…
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But who is this magistrate who made the error for which Vincent Van Quickenborne takes responsibility by resigning? According to our Flemish colleagues, this is a certain Dirk M. Aged 60, this first deputy of the King’s prosecutor at the Brussels public prosecutor’s office has been handling extradition requests for more than ten years. It was also he who took care of the extradition of Carles Puigdemont, the former head of the Catalan government.
Dirk M., the “absolute master” in matters of international cooperation
Dirk M. is an expert in international cooperation in criminal law and his work is praised by his colleagues whom Het Laatste Nieuws was able to contact. “Dirk is an absolute master in his field,” says a source. His experience has made him a reference in matters of terrorism. In 2006, he was even seconded by Belgium to the United Nations in Vienna as an expert in terrorism prevention.
Who to replace Van Quickenborne? Whoever takes his place will have his work cut out for him.
However, the man is intriguing. He was indeed involved in suspicious affairs. In 2009, a Standaard investigation, for example, revealed special links between Dirk M. and businessman Koen Blijweert, a figure who has regularly been in the sights of the authorities. The investigation revealed in particular that during the years 1996 and 1997, the magistrate would have gone to “a luxury brothel” located in Amsterdam, in the company of Blijweert’s driver. These visits were allegedly paid for with Blijweert’s credit card.
The federal police reportedly collected the testimony of a former employee of Koen Blijweert who claimed that Dirk M. had manipulated files several times to his friend’s advantage, and among other things provided him with information on tax audits, so he might hide what he had to hide before being controlled.
At the end of the 1990s, according to an investigating judge, he also “secretly” requested a money laundering file which concerned a lawyer. The latter defended and was a friend… of Koen Blijweert.
But these cases only cost “light disciplinary penalties” to Dirk M., who apparently never lost (so far) the confidence of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office despite this.
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