BRUSSELS: More than 100 of Europe’s most dangerous criminal networks operate in Belgium, a center for international drug trafficking as well as being the heart of EU politics, officials said on Friday, as street shooting rise in the capital.
Belgian Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt said drug gangs were behind this year’s rise in street shootings in Brussels, with six recorded in March alone. Gangs from the French coastal town of Marseille were seeking to fill a vacuum left in Brussels after arrests of Albanian mafia members, he said.
About 30 people were arrested in a large-scale operation by the country’s federal police in February 2022, Belgian media reported.
With a major port in Antwerp, Belgium is an important drugs hub.
Local media have reported shootings in recent months that have injured passers-by in shopping and residential districts of Brussels that were not previously not associated with such crime.
The federal police declined to comment on street shooting statistics.
Van Tigchelt and Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, spoke at a news conference as EU police agency Europol said it had identified the 821 most dangerous criminal networks in the bloc, and their 25,000 members, to help cross-border investigations.
Half of the groups were involved in drug trafficking, said Europol head Catherine De Bolle, while 86 percent of them used legal businesses to launder money.
Drug gangs behind rise in shootings in EU capital Brussels, officials say
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Drug gangs behind rise in shootings in EU capital Brussels, officials say
- Belgian Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt said drug gangs were behind this year’s rise in street shootings in Brussels, with six recorded in March alone
- About 30 people were arrested in a large-scale operation by the country’s federal police in February 2022
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
