Silence on cop killer’s holiday
BELGIAN authorities have sought to deflect questions over the furlough of a convicted criminal, known to have been radicalised in jail, who killed three people in the Belgian city of Liege.
Just hours after his release, the man, named by Belgian media as Benjamin Herman, killed two policewomen and a bystander on Tuesday before being gunned down in what officials say was a terrorist attack.
Police also suspect the 36year-old of the murder of a former associate.
In and out of jail for a variety of crimes since 2003, Herman found a path to violence that has heightened concerns Europe’s prisons are incubators for radicalism.
He converted to Islam while in detention.
In Belgium, a prisoner’s inclusion on a state security list as a suspected radical is not automatically communicated to all police.
It was the 14th time since his detention that he was granted temporary leave, intended to help him prepare for eventual reintegration into society in 2020, Justice Minister Koen Geens told reporters.
“Everyone in Belgium is asking the same question: how is it possible that someone convicted for such serious acts was allowed to leave prisons?,” Belgium’s deputy prime minister Alexander de Croo was cited by local media as saying.
Herman stabbed the police- aged 45 and 53, from behind about 10.30am on Tuesday on a boulevard in the centre of Belgium’s third biggest city, seized their handguns and shot both.
The older officer was the mother of twins.
He shot dead a 22-year-old trainee teacher who was sitting in a car before entering a high school and taking two female employees hostage.
That triggered a major intervention by armed police. Students were moved to safety as a gunbattle broke out.
The gunman was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” – God is greatest in Arabic – when he burst from the school shooting at police, in a video shot by local residents.
Four police officers were wounded before the attacker was finally killed.