Emilie Vansteenkiste was crowned Miss Belgium this Saturday in La Panne. KURT DESPLENTER (AFP)
A coroner in Bruges, Belgium, Sunday ordered the preventive detention of a man who planned to attack Saturday’s Miss Belgium pageant to cause a “bloodbath” and whom he has reportedly accused of attempted terrorist murder, federal prosecutors said. The suspect, 46-year-old Peter C., was arrested on Saturday afternoon in the Belgian coastal town of La Panne, very close to where the national beauty pageant was due to start shortly thereafter. The individual, about whom few details are currently known, was armed with a handgun and another rifle and bulletproof vest were found in his car.
A woman of “Dutch nationality” accompanying him was arrested alongside the man, about whom the judge has not yet made a decision. According to the prosecutor, it is not clear whether the woman, about whom no further details were released, knew about the alleged attacker’s plans.
The alarm went off when Peter C., a man from Lommel in northern Belgium who was not on the radar of police or intelligence agencies, emailed his ex-wife, who he would have split from late last year he announced his intention to perpetrate a “bloodbath”, according to Belgian media. She quickly contacted the police, who massed around the theater in La Panne, very close to the French border where the beauty pageant was to take place, and managed to arrest the suspect before he could carry out the attack.
According to the VRT broadcaster, the man, who was driving a rental car and had bought two tickets to the competition, was stopped in the theater’s parking lot along with the woman who was accompanying him. He had a pistol in his pocket at the time of his arrest. No one opposed their arrest.
“The investigation revealed that [el presunto atacante] He may have intended to commit an attack during the Miss Belgium election that took place a little later. they are not clear”. Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden welcomed the police action as he said in a tweetYou managed to “thwart a possible attack”. The Miss Belgium pageant started a little later than planned, but without further incident.
The alleged assailant’s lawyer has denied to the HLN newspaper that his client intended to cause a massacre. “I would not have attacked Miss Belgium in 100 million years,” Walter Van Steenbrugge assured the Flemish newspaper. According to prosecutors, the accused must appear before a first-instance court in Bruges within the next five days, which will decide on his future.
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