It happened around 7 p.m. on Thursday evening in the middle of Brussels. A police car stopped in front of a red traffic light near the Nordbahnhof, a man with a knife approached, and the disaster took its course. The man stabbed the policeman who was driving in the neck, rushed to the passenger side, stabbed the second policeman in the right arm. The man called out “Allahu Akbar,” said the second police officer when he radioed for backup.
The rushing colleagues stopped the perpetrator with a few shots and arrested him. Any help came too late for the police officer, who was injured in the neck, and the only thing that could be determined in the hospital was his death. Policeman number two had to be operated on, his condition was stable, it said on Friday. The big question now is: have the Belgian security authorities failed in this case?
The man had asked for the help of a psychologist
As it turned out on Friday, the alleged perpetrator Yassine N., 32 years old, is on a list from the Belgian anti-terrorist agency Ocam, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice. N. has multiple criminal records and was in prison between 2013 and 2019. But even more: the man had only warned the police about himself on Thursday morning, a few hours before the crime.
He had turned up at a police station of his own accord. There he spoke about his hatred of the police, threatened an attack – and asked a psychologist to help him. The police then applied to a public prosecutor for compulsory admission to the closed psychiatric ward, but received the information: There was no legal basis for this, after all the man had appeared voluntarily. Officials then took him to a clinic and left him in the care of doctors and nurses. When they phoned a few hours later to inquire about him, they received an answer from the clinic: the man had been released.
Because of his gunshot wounds, the alleged perpetrator could not be heard until Friday evening. Prosecutors have opened a case against him for murder and attempted murder in a terrorist context. However, it will also have to be clarified how a man who is on a list of possible terrorists and who was obviously out of control could have been left unattended after he had gone to the police himself.
In three weeks, the big terror trial, which is supposed to work up the attacks of March 22, 2016, will begin in Brussels. 32 people died at the time, a terrorist cell operating from Brussels that had already carried out the devastating attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015 was responsible. The Belgian security authorities had to be accused of serious failure at the time. There is now no evidence that the crime on Thursday evening was planned or assigned to a terrorist network. But the death of a young police officer raises doubts as to whether the security authorities have really learned anything.