2023-10-22 16:04:37
New information after the attack in Belgium. The radicalized Tunisian, who killed two Swedes on Monday in Brussels, was the subject of an extradition request from his country’s authorities after escaping in 2011 from a prison where he was serving a 26-year sentence, said Sunday the public prosecutor’s office in the Belgian capital.
This extradition request received by the Belgian authorities in August 2022 was not processed by the competent magistrate of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office to whom it was transmitted two weeks later, “a monumental error” which led to the resignation on Friday evening. of Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne.
“The understaffing of the prosecution played a role”
On Sunday, the head of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, Tim De Wolf, spoke to the press. “The serious understaffing of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office played a role, but (…) it is not a justification,” declared the magistrate. He admitted that after receiving the file, in September 2022, it had undoubtedly been forgotten in a cupboard. “None of the colleagues involved remember what happened to this specific file a year ago. There is no trace of further treatment,” continued Tim De Wolf.
The perpetrator of Monday evening’s attack, Abdesalem Lassoued, was sentenced to “more than twenty-six years in prison in Tunisia in 2005, but escaped from prison in January 2011.” According to the prosecutor’s explanations, he was “reported” by the Tunisian authorities “on July 1, 2022, via Interpol”. But at the time the document only mentioned an extradition request “for an escape from prison”, which is not an offense under Belgian law. Tunis’ request had to be clarified by sending “a series of annexes” a month and a half later. But the file then got lost in the prosecution, without the ministry relaunching the subject.
Debates on the means of the security forces
Saturday evening the Minister of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden, had already explained that due to the lack of details in the first “red notice” from Interpol targeting Lassoued, the case could not immediately receive legal treatment. The reason for the Tunisian conviction was not specified on Sunday by the prosecution. According to several Belgian newspapers, Lassoued had been found guilty of several attempted murders. The attack which targeted Swedish football supporters on Monday evening relaunched the debate on the means of the Belgian security forces, and the monitoring of radicalized profiles, in particular by the immigration services.
After three other unsuccessful attempts since 2011 in Norway, Sweden and Italy, the author’s request for asylum in Belgium was rejected. He had been targeted since March 2021 by an expulsion order that was never executed. He was shot dead Tuesday morning by Belgian police. This weekend the government announced reinforcements both to the Brussels prosecutor’s office and to the federal police force in the capital.
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