Inmate on leave kills three, setting off terror probe
AKNIFE-wielding prison inmate on a 48-hour leave stabbed two police officers yesterday in the Belgian city of Liege, seized their service weapons and shot them and a bystander to death before being mowed down by a group of officers, setting off a major terror investigation into the country’s most savage assault since 2016 suicide attacks.
Prime Minister Charles Michel acknowledged the assailant, who had a lengthy criminal record that included theft, assault and drug offenses, had appeared in three reports on radicalism but was still allowed to take a leave from prison.
Yesterday’s attack happened outside a cafe in the eastern city of Liege when the assailant crept up on the two female officers from behind and stabbed them repeatedly.
“He then took their weapons. He used the weapons on the officers, who died,” the Liege prosecutor’s spokesman, Philippe Dulieu, told reporters.
Dulieu said the attacker then shot and killed a 22-year-old teacher in a vehicle that was leaving a parking lot outside a nearby high school. He then took two women hostage inside the school before confronting police massed outside.
“He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead,” the spokesman said, adding that the hostages escaped unharmed.
THE TARGET
Police Chief Christian Beaupere said “the goal of the attacker was to target the police.” He identified the slain officers as 45-year-old Lucile Garcia and 53-year-old Soraya Belkacemi. He said Belkacemi was the mother of 13year-old twin daughters who earlier lost their father, also a police officer. Four other officers were wounded in the attack, one seriously with a severed femoral artery.
Belgian media identified the suspect as Benjamin Herman, a Belgian national born in 1982, though in keeping with standard procedure authorities declined to confirm his identity.