Vincent Van Quickenborne, 49, the Belgian Minister of Justice, likes to maintain his reputation as the cool dog of politics. Ever since his political beginnings, he has flirted with smoking the occasional joint. He likes to call himself “Q” or “Quick” because he supposedly thinks and acts faster than everyone else. He claims to have been the first Belgian ever to own an iPhone. One of his passions is Twitter, on Saturday evening Quickenborne sent a message out into the world on Saturday evening that once again sounded very cool – but had a very serious background: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
The pseudo-Latin saying, made famous by a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood (“The Handmaid’s Report”), roughly means: Don’t let the bastards get you down. In this case, the bastards are the bosses of the drug mafia who obviously want to finish off the Belgian justice minister because he has intensified the fight against organized crime. Van Quickenborne was apparently about to be attacked or kidnapped at his place of residence. The minister, like his wife and children, is now under increased surveillance.
The Belgian media had been asked by the security authorities to wait before reporting, so what had happened on Thursday evening around the minister’s house on the outskirts of Kortrijk, West Flanders province, only came to light over the weekend. Accordingly, a suspicious car with a Dutch license plate was reported by residents. The occupants were said to have fled before police arrived, but left a second car nearby. At least a Kalashnikov, other weapons and petrol bottles were found in it. As the public prosecutor confirmed, the investigations led to the trail of three men of Dutch nationality. They were arrested in The Hague and Leidschendam during the night from Friday to Saturday. Details were initially not known, but politicians and the media in Belgium unanimously interpreted the incident: the drug mafia is ready to mess with the Belgian state.
The port of Antwerp – a central drug hub
Mainly because of the port of Antwerp, Belgium, together with the neighboring Netherlands, is considered to be a preferred European hub for drugs. The scale of the problem became clear in April 2021 when Belgian customs seized eleven tons of cocaine in a shipment coming from Paraguay. The client apparently acted from Dubai. The public prosecutor’s office is still busy evaluating the gigantic case – 2,400 suspects, 600 arrests – and the case is only the tip of the iceberg, experts warn.
In 2021 alone, 90 tons of cocaine were seized in the port of Antwerp – more than ever before.
(Photo: Jonas Roosens/Imago Images/Belga)
Ignacio de la Serna, the spokesman for Belgian prosecutors, gave some notable interviews earlier this year to shake up the public. He complained that the authorities were dramatically understaffed given the scale of gang crime. “We’ve recently seen absolutely monstrous acts. Beheaded people, dismembered people – something like this was previously known from Latin America,” he said. If politicians don’t take countermeasures more decisively, the mafia will eventually subdue the Belgian state.
Justice Minister Quickenborne, after all, has made the fight against criminal gangs a priority of his work. He provided the authorities with more money and staff, and he founded an independent investigative agency for the port of Antwerp. He signed agreements with the United Arab Emirates to be able to take action against drug lords who evade Dubai. The minister should now apparently atone for all of this.
The gangs do not shy away from spectacular acts, see the murder of Peter de Vries
The Belgian Attorney General announced at the weekend that the threat should be taken very seriously. The murder in Amsterdam last year of the Dutch journalist Peter de Vries, an expert in drug crime, showed that the gangs operating in the Netherlands and Belgium do not shy away from spectacular crimes. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who, like his Minister of Justice, is a member of the Liberal Flemish Party, said at the weekend that his government would not be intimidated: “The work goes on.”
Vincent Van Quickenborne himself asserted that the rule of law would never bow to violence. At the weekend, however, he had to cancel several public appointments on the advice of the security authorities.