The controversy swells in Belgium after the attack on Thursday evening of two police officers, one of them having succumbed to his injuries. In a press release, the Saint-Luc University Clinics wanted to shed light on their management of the suspect. We remake the film for you.
The suspect, Yassine M., a 32-year-old Belgian, a former radicalized detainee on file with the anti-terrorist services, presented himself in the morning at a police station in the Belgian capital asking to be “psychologically taken care of”, according to the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, and had, on the advice of a magistrate, been accompanied to the Saint-Luc hospital.
The hospital indicates that the man presented himself to the emergency department around 11 a.m. on Thursday, accompanied by three police officers, “for voluntary psychological care”. After “28 minutes”, he was seen by a nurse, according to the establishment, which specifies that the police left the emergency department “at that time without ever having informed the members of the emergency staff of the dangerousness of the person “.
“No instructions were given”
The man was then placed “in the waiting room to wait before his psychiatric treatment”, but “about twenty minutes later”, the nurse coming to pick him up found that he “had left the room. ‘waiting and doing so of his own free will’. “The psychiatric evaluation could therefore not take place”, underlines the hospital.
The hospital recalls that “any patient who comes to the emergency room is free to leave them on his own initiative unless he was part of continuous police surveillance, which was not the case in the context of this admission. “No instructions have been given by the competent authorities”, adds the establishment.
The attack, during which another policeman was injured, raised questions and protests even within the government coalition led by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, and angered the police unions, who are calling for a demonstration in Brussels on 28 November. The assailant, injured by fire from a patrol arriving as reinforcements, was hospitalized.