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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

US designates Nordic far-right group as terrorists

The United States on Friday designated the Nordic Resistance Movement and three of its leaders terrorists, saying the Scandinavian neo-Nazis pose a threat to Americans.

Published: 15 June 2024 11:37 CEST
US designates Nordic far-right group as terrorists

The State Department added the movement and the leaders to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, meaning that any US-based assets will be frozen and that they will be blocked from using the US financial system.

The State Department said it made its finding based on the group’s history of violence rooted in “its openly racist, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQI+ platform.”

“The United States remains deeply concerned about the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist threat worldwide and is committed to countering the transnational components of violent white supremacy,” a State Department statement said.

The group has carried out or attempted to carry out “acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States,” it said.

The leaders blacklisted by the State Department, all Swedes, were group’s chief Fredrik Vejdeland, and two other senior figures, Par Oberg and Leif Robert Eklund.

The group, known by its Swedish acronym NMR, professes Nazism and seeks a united “ethnic Nordic” nation.

Founded in 1997 in Sweden as the Swedish Resistance Movement, it saw sister organisations spring up in other Nordic countries until they were united under NMR in 2016.

The group stages protests and produces media arguing against immigration, but has also been linked to violence.

In 2016, a 28-year old man died after being assaulted by NMR members in Helsinki and, according to watchdog organisation Expo, several members have been convicted of a series of bombings in Gothenburg in 2016 and 2017.

Finland’s Supreme Court banned the group in 2020.

After taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration laid out a strategy to counter domestic terrorism that included identifying foreign groups that provide support.

The State Department first designated a white supremacist group as terrorists in 2020 — the Russian Imperial Movement — after years of largely targeting Islamist and far-left movements overseas.

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