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Reuters

Belgian authorities faced questions on Wednesday over why a prison inmate, believed to have been radicalised in jail, was let out for a day and used it to kill three people in the city of Liege as well as a former associate.
The justice minister, who oversees the prison service, said he felt “responsible” for Tuesday’s bloodshed in which two policewomen and a bystander were killed. The attacker was shot dead by police at a nearby school soon afterward.
“The question of whether this man should have been given leave is striking because he killed three completely innocent people with a wish to kill himself,” Koen Geens told RTBF radio.
“I have to examine my own conscience.”
Interior Minister Jan Jambon said authorities were still examining the motives of Benjamin Herman, a 31-year-old Belgian drug dealer who had been in jail for years but was let out for two days on Monday to prepare for an eventual release in 2020.
‘Extremist’ used Belgian policewomen’s own guns to shoot them and a bystander
But federal prosecutors said there was evidence that they were dealing with “terrorist murder”.
Herman had shouted “Allahu Akbar”, the Muslim affirmation of faith, during his attack and he had had contacts with Islamist radicals in jail in 2016 and early 2017.
He also appeared to have followed online exhortations from Islamic State to stab police officers and use their service weapons to shoot others, prosecutors said.

Belgian federal magistrate Wenke Roggen said Wednesday that the attack was considered “terrorist murder”. She said it’s being treated as terrorism given the way Herman acted, which she says resembled Islamic State calls via video to attack police with knives and steal their weapons, the fact that he yelled “Allahu Akbar” and was in contact with radicalised people.


Officials praised the quick wittedness of the cafe owner outside whose bar Herman had killed the two policewomen, aged 54 and 44. By the time the killer, wielding two police pistols, came in looking for more victims, he had got all his customers into hiding.
Confirming that Herman was also believed to have killed an acquaintance 50km (30 miles) away on Monday night, Jambon told RTL radio: “There are signs he was radicalised in prison but is it that radicalisation which drove him to commit these acts?


“It could have been because he had nothing to look forward to, because he also killed someone the night before, the guy’s psychology and the fact, it seems, he may have been on drugs.”
He said that although Herman was flagged up in security reports on possibly violent Islamists in 2016 and early 2017, he had appeared to be something of a fringe figure.
Unlike after other suspected “lone wolf” attacks in Europe, there has been no claim of responsibility by Islamic State.


In and out of jail for a variety of crimes since 2003, Herman may have found a path to violence that has heightened concerns that Europe’s prisons are incubators for radicalism.
In Belgium, a prisoner’s inclusion on a state security list as a suspected radical is not automatically passed on to all police or the prison service, experts say.
It was the fourteenth time since his detention that he was granted temporary leave, to help him prepare for eventual reintegration into society, Justice Minister Geens said.
“Everyone in Belgium is asking the same question: how is it possible that someone convicted of such serious acts was allowed to leave prisons?” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander de Croo was quoted as saying.


The national crisis centre, on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell helped kill 130 people in Paris in 2015, did not raise its alert level, an indication follow-up attacks were not expected.
“I think it was just one individual who completely snapped and went on a killing spree,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a specialist on jihadism who has maintained contacts with Belgians fighting in Syria. “I don’t think it was an organised attack.”
Convicts have been behind several attacks in Europe. Hundreds of prisoners deemed radical by authorities are due to be released in the coming years. The Belgian parliament warned in a report late last year: “They come in as drug dealers and leave as Salafi jihadists,” a security source said.
Security services in Belgium and France have faced criticism at home and abroad for intelligence failures and their response to attacks in Brussels, Paris and Nice.
A Brussels-based Islamic State cell was involved in attacks on Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people and on Brussels in 2016 in which 32 died.


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Islamic militancy

Convicted, jailed, radicalised: so why was Belgium killer granted leave from prison?

In this frame grab taken from video, police apprehend a man believed to be the attacker, near an unidentified injured person thought to be a police officer after Tuesday’s attack in Liege, Belgium. Photo: AP

epa06772582 Mother of the police officer Soraya who was shot during the attack, Bernadette Hennart pays tribute to her daughter in front of the Cafe 'Les Augustins', in Liege, Belgium, 30 May 2018. On 29 May, a gunman was shot dead by anti-terrorist police after reportedly killing two police officers and a passerby and injuring two others in the center of the Belgian city of Liege. During a shootout the man was said to have entered a high school where he took a female cleaner hostage before being shot by the police. EPA-EFE/STEPHANIE LECOCQ

Police officers and others gather for a moment of silence in Liege, Belgium, Wednesday, May 30, 2018. A gunman killed three people, including two police officers, in the Belgian city of Liege on Tuesday. Police later killed the attacker, and other officers were wounded in the shooting.(AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

A picture taken on May 30, 2018 shows a makeshift altar situated where the two policewomen were killed during the attack, in Liege, the day before. An attack that killed two policewomen and a male bystander in the eastern Belgian city of Liege on May 29, 2018 amount to "terrorist murder," prosecutors spokesman said during a press conference. Also the attacker is suspected of killing one other person on the eve of his rampage, according to prosecutors on May 30, 2018. Belgian police is investigating how the gunman known for contacts with Islamist extremists came to launch a terror attack. / AFP PHOTO / Emmanuel DUNAND

TOPSHOT - A police officer speaks with parents of children at a nearby high school in the eastern Belgian city of Liege on May 29, 2018, after a gunman shot dead three people, two of them policemen, before being killed by elite officers. The shooting occurred around 10:30am (0830 GMT) on a major artery in the city close to a high school. "We don't know anything yet," the spokeswoman for the Liege prosecutors office, told AFP when asked about the shooter's motives. / AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYS

Policemen gather as they prepare to observe a minute of silence in Liege, Belgium May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman

In this frame grab taken from video, a man believed to be the attacker walks with his hands in the air, in Liege, Belgium, Tuesday, May 29, 2018. The police chief in the Belgian city of Liege says that a knife-wielding man stabbed two female officers before taking their handguns and shooting them both dead. (AP)

Bernadette Hennart (R), the mother of killed policewoman Soraya Belkacemi reacts as she arrives with Soraya's brother Kamel Belkacemi (L) to pay tribute to her daughter, on May 30, 2018, in Liege at a makeshift altar situated where the two policewomen were killed during an attack the day before. An attack that killed two policewomen and a male bystander in the eastern Belgian city of Liege on May 29, 2018 amount to "terrorist murder," prosecutors spokesman said during a press conference. Also the attacker is suspected of killing one other person on the eve of his rampage, according to prosecutors on May 30, 2018. Belgian police is investigating how the gunman known for contacts with Islamist extremists came to launch a terror attack. / AFP PHOTO / Emmanuel DUNAND

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Suspect in Liege killings is identified as Benjamin Herman, a petty criminal who converted to Islam and was radicalised in jail, reports say


Convicted, jailed, radicalised: so why was Belgium killer granted leave from prison?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Suspect in Liege killings is identified as Benjamin Herman, a petty criminal who converted to Islam and was radicalised in jail, reports say

Suspect in Liege killings is identified as Benjamin Herman, a petty criminal who converted to Islam and was radicalised in jail, reports say