As has been the case after each of the terrorist attacks that have struck Belgium since the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, a parliamentary commission met on Wednesday, October 25, and the Belgian government was questioned the next day. This time the aim was to understand how the Tunisian Abdesalem Lassoued, perpetrator of the shooting that claimed the lives of two Swedes in Brussels on October 16, managed to escape the attention of all services for at least seven years. Belgian. Even when the Tunisian justice system, which sentenced him to almost 27 years in prison, demanded the fugitive’s extradition in August 2022. Even when Interpol issued a “Red Notice” in July of the same year, an alert was generally intended to lead to the location and arrest of a person.
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The answer came on Friday, October 20, four days after the attack: the foreign and justice ministries had received the application from Tunis and forwarded it to the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, where it was to be examined by a specialized judge. But at the prosecution, this handwritten file was placed on the shelf of a closet where it was forgotten. Abdesalem Lassoued, who had become radicalized without the knowledge of the police, the secret services and the judiciary, but not his neighbors and those in charge of the mosque from which he was expelled, was therefore able to obtain weapons and then prepare his attack that he, in principle, has been looking for at least fourteen months.
The Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne has learned the lessons from this mistake, which he himself described as “monumental” but “individual”. He quit. A way to point the finger at the alleged guilty prosecutor, but also to relieve other departments and, above all, to avoid accusing other officials, which would have led to a government crisis. His colleague Annelies Vanderlinden, Interior Minister, risked being blamed for possible mistakes by the police, and the State Secretary for Migration, Nicole de Moor, for the inadequacies of the immigration authorities. Asylum who had not ensured the implementation of the expulsion order they had issued against the person concerned in 2020.
“A brothel without a name”
The Prime Minister himself had until then blamed primarily European countries for allegedly failing to provide timely information that they possessed about Abdesalem Lassoued, and Tunisia for generally refusing to provide its nationals with the right to Asylum was refused and readmission was refused. However, in this case, Tunis actually requested Lassoued and had submitted the famous request, which, however, remained hidden from the Belgian services…
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