Liege Terrorist Attack- 3 Dead

At approximately 4:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday May 29, 2018 a terrorist attack took place near a Café in the Belgium city of Liege.  The assailant stabbed two police officers before shooting them with their service weapons.

Police sources have described the assailant as shouting “Allahu Akbar” before killing the victims but this has not  not been officially confirmed by authorities. The attacker has been identified as 36-year-old Benyamin Herman, from Rochefort, France. Herman is known to Belgian authorities for committing crimes of theft, drug trafficking, and damage to public property. Authorities are looking into whether Herman converted to Islam while in prison.

After killing the police officers, Herman proceeded down the street and fatally shot and killed a 22-year-old man sitting in his parked car, before entering a high school and took a woman hostage. The hostage was not harmed during the incident.

Local media report Herman, was temporarily released from prison Monday night for “family leave” to prepare Herman for reintegration into society.  Herman was not on a terrorist watch list, and may have been “psychologically unstable” before the attack.

It looks like terrorism is the likely motivation for these attacks. As federal prosecutors took over the investigation of the attack. A prison source said that Herman had become increasingly close to jihadist inmates, and that he wanted to “carry out attacks when released”.

Liege, the biggest city in Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia region was the scene of a mass shooting,  in December of 2011 when Nordine Amrani, a Belgian of Morrocan descent with a history of a weapon and drug crimes killed six people and wounded over 100 before committing suicide. Belgian authorities did not link that case to terrorism.

A Brussels-based ISIS cell that was involved in attacks in Paris and Belgium in 2015 and 2016 respectively that killed over 160 people has kept the country on edge about future attacks. A Islamic State Brussels-cell had links to Verviers, a town close to Liege. In 2015 police raided a safe house and killed two men who recently had returned from fighting in Syria.

Attacks on police officers in Belgium are nothing new. On August 5,2016 a man stabbed two police officers in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek. The Schaerbeek district has a heavy immigrant population. Schaerbeek is a mix of Turkish, Moroccan and other immigrants who often settle first in Molenbeek, which was home to some of the Paris bombers. Schaerbeek is known for being home to pockets of North African Muslims, some of whom sympathize with the Islamic State.

The Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point notes that “Belgium has often served as a logistical hub for jihadi activity, and as a result, it is thought that terrorists have spared the country from major attacks in order to maintain its safe haven status.” Most individuals that have been arrested for Islamic State activity within Belgium, have Belgian citizenship. Of 61 citizens arrested, 27 of them were born in the country. An estimated 550 plus fighters have gone from Belgium to Syria and Iraq most joining ISIS, it is estimated that around 110 of those fighters have returned to Belgium.