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TERRORISM

Belgian justice minister resigns after deadly Brussels attack on Swedes

Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne resigned Friday, four days after a Tunisian migrant killed two Swedish football fans in Brussels, saying the failure to extradite him was a "monumental mistake".

Published: 21 October 2023 13:00 CEST
Belgian justice minister resigns after deadly Brussels attack on Swedes
Floral tributes, a Swedish team jersey, and notes of condolence are placed on the pavement and a sign reads 'courage to the Swedish people' during a commemoration for the victims of a shooting in the center of Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: Martin Meissner/AP.

He told a news conference that Tunisia had on August 15 last year sought the extradition of Abdesalem Lassoued and it had not been followed up.

“It’s an individual, monumental and unacceptable error with dramatic consequences,” he said. “The magistrate in question did not follow up this demand and the dossier was not handled”.

“I am not looking for any excuses. I think it’s my duty” to resign, he said.

The shootings just before the start of a Belgium-Sweden international football match had renewed debate in Belgium over judicial and administrative errors in following up on radicalised persons, although Lassoued was not on the authorities’ radar.

Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said he had taken note of the minister’s decision, adding he had “Respect for his political courage”.

READ ALSO: LISTEN: Why a terrorist targeted Swedes, and does the far right run Sweden now?

“This new information coming from the prosecutors hits me deeply as I have done everything possible to improve the judicial system”.

The 45-year-old attacker was fatally shot in a police operation on Tuesday.

Official documents showed Lassoued had lodged asylum applications in Norway, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. He had stayed in Belgium illegally after his bid for asylum was rejected in 2020.

French authorities meanwhile have arrested a suspect over the Brussels shootings, a source close to the case said Friday. A man was arrested Thursday in the western French city of Nantes, the source said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack saying it was “in the context of operations called for by the Islamic State to target nationals of coalition countries”.

The attacker had served a prison sentence in Sweden during the period 2012-2014, Swedish officials revealed Tuesday.

In a social media post after the killings, the gunman had boasted of being inspired by the IS group.

The Swedish foreign ministry said the victims were a man in his 70s from the Stockholm region and a man in his 60s living abroad. The injured Swede was a man in his 70s currently in hospital.

It advised Swedes abroad “to observe increased caution and heightened vigilance.”

Sweden is among dozens of nations in the Global Coalition against IS, formed in 2014 after the militants seized huge swathes of Iraq and Syria

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TERRORISM

Two men held in Germany over Swedish parliament terror plot

German police have arrested two people suspected of planning a terror attack on the Swedish parliament, reports Der Spiegel.

Published: 19 March 2024 13:22 CET
Two men held in Germany over Swedish parliament terror plot

The men, aged 30 and 23, were arrested in Gera south of Leipzig on Tuesday morning.

Identified as Ibrahim M G and Ramin N, Der Spiegel reports that they are Afghan citizens with links to IS Khorasan, the splinter group of the Islamic State terror group in Afghanistan.

They are suspected of planning to open fire on police officers and other people in or at the Swedish parliament building in Stockholm, in retaliation of a series of Quran burnings in Sweden in recent years. 

According to the prosecutor’s arrest order, the men, acting in close consultation with officials of IS Khorasan, researched the area and tried to obtain weapons, albeit unsuccessfully.

Swedish police and security police declined to comment on the reports when approached by Swedish media.

The men were expected to appear at a remand hearing in Karlsruhe on Tuesday.

It’s the second suspected terror plot uncovered in Germany against Sweden over Quran burnings. In December, two brothers from Syria were convicted of planning a bomb attack on a church in Sweden.

Last year, at least four militant Islamic terror groups called for revenge attacks against Sweden in response to the series of Quran-burning protests carried out by the Iraqi activist Salwan Momika and by the Danish activist Rasmus Paludan. 

As a result, Sweden’s National Centre for Terrorist Threat Assessment in August raised the terror threat level to “High”, or four on a scale of five. In a interview with The Local at the time, terror researcher Magnus Ranstorp called the threat against Sweden “unprecedented”. 

According to the Germany’s prosecutor’s office, the two suspects are said to have made concrete preparations for the planned attack in close consultation with ISPK officials.

Germany’s security authorities have long been warning against the ISPK, an offshoot of the Islamic State in Afghanistan and Central Asia. The terrorist group has already tried in several cases to incite young people in Germany to carry out attacks on “infidels”, or police officers via the internet.

A cell of Islamists from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan arrested in Germany in July 2023 is also said to have been in contact with ISPK cadres. According to Spiegel, citing judicial files, they were possibly planning attacks on Jews in Germany, and a liberal mosque in Berlin could also have been a terrorist target.

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