Belgium’s justice minister has resigned after it emerged that the Islamic extremist who shot dead two Swedes in Brussels this week had been denied asylum and was sought for extradition by Tunisia.
Justice minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said late on Friday that he and other officials had been searching for details to understand how Abdesalem Lassoued had disappeared off the map two years ago after being denied asylum.
“This morning at nine o’clock, I remarked the following elements: on 15 August, 2022, there was an extradition demand by Tunisia for this man,” Van Quickenborne told reporters.
“This demand was transmitted on 1 September, as it should have been, by the justice expert at the Brussels prosecutor’s office. The magistrate in charge did not follow up on this extradition demand and the dossier was not acted upon,” he said.
“It’s an individual error. A monumental error. An unacceptable error. An error with dramatic consequences,” Van Quickenborne said in announcing that he had submitted his resignation to prime minister Alexander De Croo.
“I am not looking for any excuses. I think it’s my duty,” to resign, he said. “This new information coming from the prosecutors hits me deeply as I have done everything possible to improve the judicial system.”
On Monday night, Lassoued shot dead two Swedish men and wounded a third man with a semiautomatic rifle. The attack forced the lockdown of more than 35,000 people in a football stadium where they had gathered to watch Belgium play Sweden.
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.
Lassoued had applied for asylum in Belgium in November 2019. He was known to police and had been suspected of involvement in human trafficking, living illegally in Belgium and of being a risk to state security.
Information provided to the Belgian authorities by an unidentified foreign government suggested that the man had been radicalised and intended to travel abroad to fight in a holy war.
But the Belgian authorities were not able to establish this, so he was never listed as dangerous.
