A police inspector was killed and another seriously injured in a knife attack Thursday, November 10, in Schaerbeek, one of the nineteen municipalities that make up the Brussels region. The perpetrator, Yassine M., a 32-year-old man of Belgian nationality, a former detainee listed as radicalized, was injured and arrested by another patrol officer who arrived quickly on the scene.
Transported to hospital, the first policeman attacked, aged 29, did not survive. Knife wounds had been stabbed at his throat. His 23-year-old colleague was operated on overnight and his days were no longer in danger on Friday.
It was around 7 p.m. Thursday, rue d’Aerschot, along the Gare du Nord, where prostitution and trafficking of all kinds are concentrated. Like every evening in this reputedly “hot” area of the Belgian capital, a police presence was assured. Stopped at a red light, the driver of a police car and his colleague were attacked by a man armed with a knife who shouted « Allah Akbar ». He then tried to flee. Pursued, he was injured in the legs and stomach. Indicted for murder in a terrorist context and attempted murder, he will be heard “as soon as his condition allows it”judicial authorities said on Friday.
Radicalized in prison
The federal prosecutor’s office, responsible in particular for terrorism cases, and the Brussels prosecutor’s office held a brief press conference on Friday morning, which consisted of the reading of a press release relating the facts. However, these raised many questions.
The magistrates have, in fact, indicated that the assailant of the police officers had gone the same morning to a police station in Evere. There would have been remarks qualified as“incoherent”, expressed his ” clothes “ police but also called for psychiatric help. A patrol then accompanied him to a hospital in the city and waited for confirmation of his treatment. Requested by the police, a magistrate however refused to launch a procedure for placing the individual under observation on the grounds that the legal criteria were not met, Yassine M. voluntarily claiming treatment. The hospital therefore authorized his discharge.
Other questions relate to the monitoring which the author of the attacks should have been subject to more generally. Incarcerated in a series of establishments from 2013 to 2019, he became radicalized during his periods of detention, which earned him a listing on the “Deradex” list of prisoners of radical movement. Placed in a special wing of Ittre prison, in Walloon Brabant, he attacked a guard. He then challenged his transfer to Lantin prison, near Liège, but the Council of State considered, in 2017, that he had “extremist motives” and wanted “to share his ideology with other prisoners”.
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