The Belgian Minister of Justice, Vincent van Quickenborneannounced his resignation this Friday after discovering that Tunisia had requested the extradition of the author in August 2022 of the monday attackhappened in Brussels, which cost the lives of two Swedes, and that request was not processed.

“It is an individual, monumental and unacceptable mistake,” Van Quickenborne declared at a press conference with the Brussels prosecutor general, Johan Delmulle. The minister apologized for the “dramatic consequences” that had the non-processing of the extradition request made by Tunisia on August 15, 2022 against Abdesalam Lassoued and transmitted on September 1, 2022 to the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office, but the competent magistrate did not process it.

“This morning at 9 a.m. I was able to confirm the following elements: on August 15, 2022 there was a request for extradition from Tunisia for this man. This request was transmitted on September 1, as it should have been, by the legal expert to the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office. The competent magistrate did not respond to this extradition request and the file was not processed. This is an individual error. A monumental mistake. An unacceptable mistake. An error with dramatic consequences,” said the resigning minister.

Although the definitive information that has led him to leave the Justice portfolio has been that the extradition request sent by Tunisia was not examined, the fact that alleged terrorist has been residing irregularly for several years in Brussels has revealed a chain of errors that question the procedures of the Belgian Intelligence and Police. After the attack that cost the lives of two people and seriously injured another last Monday in Brussels, the country’s authorities confirmed that the confessed perpetrator of the attack requested asylum in 2019 but the Belgian authorities denied him such protection and decreed his expulsion in October 2020.

However, Abdesalem L. continued to live irregularly in a neighborhood of Brussels where he lived with his wife and daughter and The expulsion order was never notified to himalthough he was under the radar of the Belgian security services for human trafficking, as he helped irregular migrants get from Belgium and France to the United Kingdom.

The Belgian police authorities have also confirmed in recent days that they had alerts about the radicalization of this person, but the Government has stressed that he was not booked for acts of violent extremism nor was he on the Coordination Body’s risk list. of the Terrorist Threat (OCAM, for its acronym in French).