AFP, published on Saturday 12 November 2022 at 19:56
The hospital that received the alleged assassin of a police officer in Brussels on Thursday hours before the attack said it had “never been informed by the police about the dangerousness of the man” who had left the hospital without undergoing a psychiatric examination to undergo.
While the circumstances surrounding the tragedy are disputed in Belgium, in a press release sent to AFP on Saturday, the Saint-Luc University Hospitals wanted to “recall that any patient presenting to the emergency room is free to contact them on their own initiative.” unless there was ongoing police surveillance, which was not the case in relation to this recording”.
“No instructions have been issued by the relevant authorities,” the facility added.
The suspect Yassine M., a 32-year-old Belgian, a former radicalized prisoner registered with the anti-terrorist services, attacked two police officers in Brussels on Thursday evening with a knife, fatally injuring one of them.
He had presented himself at a police station in the Belgian capital that morning with a request for “psychological care”, according to the Brussels prosecutor, and had been escorted to the Saint Luke hospital on the advice of a judge.
In response to Thursday night’s attack, the suspect was injured by police fire and was still hospitalized as of Saturday. He is “under arrest warrant for murder and attempted murder in a terrorist context” but has not yet been heard, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor told AFP.
The hospital where he was taken before the events said the man presented to the emergency room “for voluntary psychological care” around 11am Thursday, accompanied by three police officers.
After “28 minutes” he was seen by a nurse, according to the facility, which specifies that the police officers left the emergency room “at the time without ever having informed the members of the emergency services about the danger of the person”.
The man was then “taken to the waiting room to await his psychiatric treatment” but “about twenty minutes later” the nurse who picked him up found he “had left the room”. . “The psychiatric assessment could therefore not take place,” said the hospital.
The attack, which injured another police officer, sparked questions and protests even within Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s coalition government.
It has also angered police unions, who have called for the resignation of Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne and are planning a protest in Brussels on November 28.