The Belgian Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, announced his resignation from the government on Friday, October 20, four days after the attack perpetrated in Brussels by a radicalized Tunisian resident illegally who killed two Swedes.
During a press conference, the minister explained that he had learned on Friday that Tunisia had requested in August 2022 the extradition of the author of the attack, Abdesalem Lassoued, a request not processed by the Brussels prosecutor’s office which been the recipient.
“The competent magistrate did not respond to this extradition request and the file was not processed,” he explained. “It is an individual, monumental fault, an unacceptable fault, with dramatic consequences,” added Mr. Van Quickenborne, saying he took “responsibility by resigning”. “I’m not making any excuses. I feel it is my duty to do so. This new information, coming from the prosecution, touches my heart, because I have done everything possible to improve our justice system,” he said.
Monday evening’s attack, carried out near downtown Brussels shortly before a football match between Belgium and Sweden, targeted Swedish fans. The assailant, a radical who had his asylum request rejected and who was the subject of an order to leave Belgium that was never executed, killed two of them in cold blood with an AR-15 type automatic rifle. He injured a third, before fleeing on a scooter.
Asylum requests rejected each time
This 45-year-old Tunisian was located Tuesday morning in a café in the Brussels commune of Schaerbeek, where he was fatally injured by police gunfire. His weapon was found.
Abdesalem Lassoued was known to the Belgian authorities for crimes, including death threats made against an asylum seeker, according to the courts. But it was not listed in the database of the Coordination Body for Threat Analysis (OCAM), a federal agency.
After the attack, Vincent Van Quickenborne simply explained that Belgium had been informed in 2016 “by a foreign police service” of Lassoued’s radicalized profile, without there being any question of a terrorist antecedent. Before requesting asylum in Belgium, where he said he arrived at the end of 2015, the Tunisian had filed similar requests in Norway, Sweden, then Italy – requests each time rejected.
