Vincent Van Quickenborne, the Belgian Minister of Justice, announced his resignation this Friday, October 20, four days after the terrorist attack in Brussels in which two Swedes were killed.
“I’m not looking for excuses.” Four days after the terrorist attack in Brussels that claimed the lives of two Swedes, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne announced his resignation on Friday October 20th.
He explained in a press conference that he had learned that Tunisia had requested the extradition of the perpetrator of the attack, Abdesalem Lassoued, in August 2022. An application was then not processed by the Brussels public prosecutor’s office. “The responsible judge did not respond to this request and the file was not processed,” he complained. “It is an individual, monumental mistake, an unacceptable mistake with dramatic consequences,” he lamented, before declaring that he was taking “responsibility by resigning.”
A relative of the terrorist was arrested in France
The attack on Monday evening, which occurred shortly before a soccer match between Belgium and Sweden near downtown Brussels, was aimed at Swedish fans.
The attacker, a radical whose asylum application was rejected and who had an order to leave Belgium but was never carried out, killed two of them in cold blood with an automatic rifle. He injured a third before escaping on a scooter.
The 45-year-old Tunisian was found on Tuesday morning in a cafe in the Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek, where he was fatally injured by police gunfire.
The investigation into this attack even extended to France. Last Thursday, raiding agents in the east of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) arrested a man suspected of having received a video with demands from the Brussels terrorist a few minutes before his crime.