‘Rambo’ on the run killed himself at start of manhunt

JURGEN CONINGS, the extremist soldier nicknamed “the Belgian Rambo” after evading capture by special forces while on the run with four stolen rocket launchers, was probably dead for almost all of the five-week manhunt launched to bring him in.

Conings, 46, a former sniper who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, abandoned his car near a national park in Flanders on May 18, as the country moved to its highest terror alert.

Special forces with helicopter support repeatedly searched 12,000 hectares of pine forests and heathland in the Hoge Kempen national park in the days and weeks that followed in an operation that cost at least £556,000.

A military operation involving 600 troops, including Dutch and German soldiers, failed to find Conings, who became a hero for anti-vaccination campaigners and had made death threats against Belgium’s most famous coronavirus expert, Marc Van Ranst.

In the end, Conings’s decomposing body was found by accident in woods near the Dutch border on June 20, after a passing hunter noticed a strong smell.

A pedometer app on his mobile phone showed he had only walked 800 steps on May 18, which has led prosecutors to believe that he killed himself soon afterwards. “More than likely, he took his own life in the first few days

‘More than likely, he took his own life in the first few days after his disappearance’

after his disappearance,” said Frédéric Van Leeuw yesterday.

The body was just 165 yards from where 220 soldiers had recently stopped searching.

The corporal, who was on a far-right terror watch list, had fled with a cache of weapons taken from a barracks after leaving letters in which he declared he no longer wanted to live in a society ruled by “politicians and virologists”.