Ram-raiders torch crime lab in bid to burn vital evidence
A CRIME gang are thought to be behind an arson attack on Belgium’s main evidence laboratory yesterday after fears that terrorists had struck.
The early morning attack at the Brussels Institute of Criminology was at first thought to have been a bomb.
But police believe it was a bid to destroy trial evidence.
Two attackers in a car rammed their way into the site and scaled a ladder to torch the lab – used to analyse DNA found at crime scenes.
Witnesses reported seeing flames and thick black smoke.
Prosecutors in the Belgian capital later questioned five people held near the scene in the northern suburb of Nederover-Hembeek.
Yesterday’s drama came fewer than six months after 32 people died in Islamic State bomb attacks at Brussels airport and a Metro station.
But prosecutors dismissed reports of a bomb in the lab raid. They said it was likely to have been an attempt to sabotage legal proceedings.
Spokeswoman Ine Van Wymersch said: “It was arson. With a fire you get explosions but it’s not that explosives were thrown or installed.”
Asked if terrorism was being considered, she said: “It is a path we are looking down but certainly not the first one.
“We are thinking more of deliberate arson by organised crime. We have no indications that it was terrorism.”
The attackers fled in the car, which was found burnt out.
Ms Van Wymersch said the explosions reported would have been chemicals detonated by the fire’s heat.
She added: “It’s an act that could be linked to destroying several files.”
Fire service spokesman Pierre Meys said: “The explosion was extremely powerful. Windows were blown out dozens of metres away.”