2023-10-27 17:11:00
The federal prosecutor’s investigation will have to determine whether Abdesalem Lassoued committed his terrorist act on October 16 in Brussels as a “lone wolf”, new Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt said on Friday. He confirmed that the perpetrator of the attack which cost the lives of two Swedish supporters had international contacts.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw declared, the day following the attack perpetrated by Abdesalem Lassoued, that there was no indication that the perpetrator of the attack had benefited from cooperation. Minister Van Quickenborne also declared that there was no indication that the perpetrator of the attack belonged to a network. The lone wolf theory was therefore initially adopted.
Meanwhile, two people have already been arrested in connection with the terrorism investigation, one in Tervuren on Wednesday and one in Malaga this Friday.
October 16 attack in Brussels: suspect arrested in Spain, he was hiding under a false identity
On the sidelines of his visit to the new halfway house in Ghent, Minister Van Tigchelt briefly responded to the Belga camera on the recent arrests in this case. “The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is doing everything possible to shed light on this matter. The investigation revealed that there were international contacts. These international contacts are transmitted to other countries via Europol and these other countries, Germany, France and Spain, intervene on this subject.”
The question is therefore whether there was a network or whether Lassoued acted alone. Mr Van Tigchelt believes that it is too early to make any statements on this subject. “So-called lone actors are generally radicalized via the internet, where they come into contact with people sharing the same extremist ideology. There is really a network when we talk regarding co-perpetrators and accomplices. The person who provided the “did the weapon know what he intended to do with it? Did other people deliberately push him to commit this attack? This is what the rest of the investigation will reveal.”
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