Gunman kills policewomen day after being freed from jail where he’d been radicalised
A VIOLENT prisoner on shortterm release shot dead two women police officers with their own weapons in a suspected terror attack in Belgium yesterday.
Benjamin Herman, who is reported to have been radicalised in prison, started the attack by repeatedly stabbing the women in the back as they checked parking meters on a busy city centre avenue.
He then stole their pistols and shot them at close-range. He also shot and killed a young man sitting in a car before he died in a hail of bullets from police marksmen in the city of Liege.
Herman, 31, who had convictions for drug-dealing and theft, had been temporarily released from prison just hours earlier.
Video footage published by the state broadcaster showed Herman, who was clad entirely in black and wearing a black bag during the attack, shouting ‘allahu akbar’, meaning ‘God is greatest’ in Arabic as he wandered the streets after killing the police officers.
He was allowed to leave his cell, despite allegedly being on the radar of national security services since last year and being described as ‘unstable and violent’ in internal police reports. In a further twist, Belgian investigators were last night seeking evidence to tie Herman to a drug-related murder and jewellery robbery in southern Belgium hours before the Liege attack.
The series of murders unfolded outside a cafe on Boulevard d’Avroy, in central Liege, at around 10.30am when Herman approached the two women officers from behind.
One of the officers who died was named as Lucile Garcia, 53, who married her partner of 14 years, local police commissioner Patrick Hagelstein, one month ago and had recently become a grandmother. Her colleague was named as Soraya Belkacemi, 45, a mother to 13-year-old twins.
Leaving them lying in pools of blood on the pavement, Herman then walked down the street where he shot a 22-yearold man, named locally as Cyril Vangriecken, who was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car while out with his mother.
The gunman fled into the nearby Waha secondary school where he took a woman cleaner hostage as pupils fled. All of the children and the hostage escaped unhurt.
Footage captured the final moments of the gun battle between police and Herman as he suddenly tried to flee the building. He was mown down by a volley of bullets from police marksmen, several of whom were hit in the leg by shots as he fired back. Prosecutor Philippe Dulieu said yesterday: ‘The event is classed as a terrorist incident.’
The fact that the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, which investigates more serious crimes including terror offences, has been assigned the case reinforces this view of the incident.
Despite having no known links to radical Islamic groups, reports claimed that Herman had become radicalised while in Lantin prison on the outskirts of Liege in 2017.
The country’s prisons have long been criticised as breeding grounds for extremism. A prisoner at the Marche-en-Famenne prison, where Herman has been staying, told national broadcaster RTBF: ‘I had seen that he was radicalised, besides he told me that he was really a Muslim.’
The attacker was released on Monday for 36 hours under a scheme to help his eventual reintroduction to society and failed to return.
Reports claimed that he had previously taken part in 13 similar short-term releases from the prison, during which he fully complied with return rules.
Belgian prime minister Charles Michel denounced the attack as ‘cowardly and blind violence’.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the UK ‘stands resolute with our Belgian allies against terror’.
Police were last night investigating whether Herman was part of a group that robbed a jewellery shop in his home town of Rochefort, around 42 miles from Liege, before the attack.
They are also looking into his possible involvement in the murder of a 30-year-old drug user, who was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in nearby Marche-en-Famenne.
Belgium has been on high alert since a terror cell was smashed in the town of Verviers in January 2015. It had been planning an attack on police officers.
IS-inspired bombings in the Belgian capital’s airport and metro station in 2016 led to the deaths of 32 people, while the city was also home to the cell behind the atrocities in Paris in the same year.
‘Mown down in a volley of bullets’ ‘Cowardly and blind violence’