Killings by Belgian inmate treated as terror; IS claims responsibility
BRUSSELS — A Belgian prison inmate who killed four people while on furlough committed “terrorist murder” and likely intended to cause more harm, prosecutors have said, as authorities searched for possible accomplices and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bloodshed.
The convict who stabbed two police officers in the city of Liege and used their handguns to kill them and a bystander was a “soldier of the caliphate”, IS said in a brief statement on the site of its Aamaq news agency.
Such wording is typical of the claims IS makes even when suspects have not been linked directly to the terror group. Belgian authorities have not said if they have evidence the inmate had vowed allegiance to IS or was acting on its orders.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon claimed that Benjamin Herman, named as the Liege attacker, killed a fourth person on Monday night away from the eastern industrial town.
Herman, 31, a convert to Islam, was known to local authorities as a repeat offender involved in petty crime and drugs. He spent most of his time in prison since 2003 and was on a two-day leave when he launched his attack. Police shot him dead not long after.
Officials said on Wednesday that the death toll from the attack outside a cafe might have been higher if the bar owner and a cleaning woman had not acted with such skill and courage.
Herman first stabbed the officers repeatedly from behind with a knife, stole their handguns and shot them as they lay on the ground.
The cafe owner quickly hustled patrons out of sight as the gunman went in and out of the establishment.
Crossing the road, Herman shot a 22-year old passenger in a car and shouted “Allahu akbar” — the Arabic phrase for “God is greatest” — several times, authorities said.
Herman then took a cleaning woman hostage at a nearby school. Imaankaf Darifa, the hostage, said she tried to keep him away from the children.
“I told him: ‘You are in a school here, you cannot come in a school, it is not right what you are doing,’” Darifa said.
Flags were flying at halfstaff on public buildings around the city on Wednesday and people gathered to sign a book of condolence and lay flowers in memory of the victims.
“Every morning I am scared that something like this will happen, and every day it happens closer to home,” Melissa Lamny said after wrapping flowers around a lamppost at the scene of the killings.
The attack has shaken Belgium. The country’s police and members of the military have worked overtime to guard public buildings since coordinated suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and subway system killed 32 people and injured hundreds on March 22, 2016.
Every morning I am scared that something like this will happen, and every day it happens closer to home.”
Melissa Lamny, a mourner