2023-10-26 16:39:04
The new Belgian Minister of Justice, Paul Van Tigchelt, on October 23, 2023 in Brussels. ÉRIC LALMAND / AFP
As following each of the terrorist attacks that have hit Belgium since the attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, a parliamentary commission met on Wednesday October 25, then the Belgian government was questioned the next day. This time, it was a question of understanding how the Tunisian Abdesalem Lassoued, author of the shooting which cost the lives of two Swedes in Brussels on October 16, was able to escape the attention of all services for at least seven years. Belgians. Even when the Tunisian justice system, which had sentenced him to nearly twenty-seven years in prison, demanded the extradition of the fugitive in August 2022. Even when Interpol issued, in July of the same year, a « notice rouge »an alert should in principle lead to the location and arrest of a person.
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The response came on Friday October 20, four days following the attack: the ministries of foreign affairs and justice had received the request from Tunis and transmitted it to the Brussels prosecutor’s office, where it was to be examined by a magistrate specialized. But at the prosecution, this handwritten file was placed on the shelf of a cabinet, where it was forgotten. Abdesalem Lassoued, radicalized without the knowledge of the police, intelligence services and justice, but not of his neighbors and those in charge of the mosque from which he was excluded, was therefore able to obtain weapons and prepare his attack then that he should, in principle, have been wanted for at least fourteen months.
The Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, learned the lessons of this error, which he himself described as « monumental » more « individual ». He quit. A way of pointing the finger at the public prosecutor presumed at fault, but also of exonerating other services and, above all, of avoiding the accusation of other officials, which would have led to a government crisis. His colleague Annelies Vanderlinden, Minister of the Interior, risked being blamed for possible police errors, and the Secretary of State for Migration, Nicole de Moor, for the shortcomings of the immigration services. asylum, who had not ensured the application of the expulsion order that they had issued once morest the person concerned in 2020.
“A brothel without a name”
The Prime Minister himself had until then mainly blamed the European countries, which allegedly did not transmit in time the information they held on Abdesalem Lassoued, and Tunisia because it refuses, in general, to resume its nationals denied the right to asylum. However, in this case, Tunis was indeed demanding Lassoued and had submitted the famous request, which had passed under the radar of the Belgian services…
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