To understand. This is the objective of Belgian justice a week after the attack which struck Brussels on October 16. Its author had been the target of an extradition request from Tunisia for more than a year, where he had been sentenced to 26 years of imprisonment before escaping: Belgium recognized this weekend as a “monumental” fiasco and tried to defuse the controversy.
The extradition request, received by the Belgian authorities in August 2022, was not processed by the competent magistrate of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office: a failure made public Friday evening by the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne, who immediately announced his resignation.
“It is an individual, monumental, unacceptable error,” he declared, saying he took “responsibility” for it. The attack, perpetrated by a radicalized 45-year-old Tunisian illegally staying in Belgium, cost the lives of two Swedes, killed with weapons of war while they came to support their national football team. The attacker, Abdesalem Lassoued, was shot dead Tuesday morning by Belgian police.
The attack quickly relaunched the debate on the means of Belgian justice and the lack of monitoring of radicalized profiles. After three other vain attempts since 2011 in Norway, Sweden and Italy, the Tunisian had an asylum request in Belgium rejected and had been targeted since March 2021 by an expulsion order that was never executed.
Forgotten file “in a cupboard”
The Belgian government had initially criticized the lack of cooperation from certain countries of origin to take back their nationals rejected from asylum: a defense undermined by this revelation of an extradition request from Tunis. The head of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, Tim De Wolf, detailed the fiasco of the judicial machine on Sunday. “The serious understaffing of the prosecution played a role, but […] this is not a justification,” he stressed to the press.
Abdesalem Lassoued was sentenced to “more than 26 years in prison in Tunisia in 2005, but escaped from prison in January 2011,” said the magistrate. A decade later, he was “reported” by the Tunisian authorities “on July 1, 2022, via Interpol”.
But the international organization’s “red notice” only mentioned an extradition request “for escape from prison” – which is not a sufficient reason in Belgian law, preventing immediate judicial treatment, observed the minister. of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden. Tunis’ request had to be specified in “a series of annexes” to its extradition request sent on August 15, 2022 to Belgium, and transmitted three weeks later to the Brussels prosecutor’s office. The file got lost there, forgotten “in a cupboard”, according to Tim De Wolf.
“None of the colleagues concerned remember what happened to it. There is no trace of further treatment. It is possible that the magistrate requested “that the file be examined later” due to ‘too many urgent cases,’ he explained. The reason for the Tunisian conviction was not specified. According to several Belgian newspapers, Abdesalem Lassoued had been found guilty of several attempted murders.
Strengthening the Brussels public prosecutor’s office
Faced with the excitement aroused and anxious to defuse the controversy, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo held a lengthy meeting on Saturday with several ministers and officials from the police and judicial authorities. “It is important that a government learns lessons quickly and acts,” he insisted.
At the same time, he announced the strengthening of the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, of which the 119 existing magistrates’ positions will be “effectively filled” (compared to 95 actually in office during 2023), and supplemented by five additional magistrates.
A new King’s Prosecutor will quickly be appointed at their head, after nine years of legal uncertainty over this key appointment, the subject of a blockage between the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking communities. The liberal leader also promised a strengthening of the number of judicial police in the Belgian capital, as well as better sharing of information between the different services (intelligence, immigration office, etc.).
Finally, another symbol, the new Minister of Justice, appointed on Sunday, is Paul Van Tigchelt: this 50-year-old Fleming, close collaborator of Van Quickenborne, had built a solid reputation as boss, from January 2016 to October 2020, of the Belgian anti-terrorist agency (Ocam), which he led during the attacks of March 22, 2016 in Brussels.