Four dead and nearly 120 wounded. This is the outcome of the shooting spree and grenade attack at a Christmas fair in the center of Liege, Belgium. The attacker Nordin Amrani, 32, committed a suicide. It is still unknown what his motives were. Meanwhile, Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio di Rupo, who visited the site of the tragedy together with king Albert II, maintains that it was not an act of terrorism. “This is an isolated act of violence, but not an act of terrorism or assassination,” says di Rupo as quoted by Euronews.
According to the representative of the Belgian Prosecutor’s office, “the attacker was well known to the police and justice.” “He had been indicted on armed assault, selling stolen goods, drug dealing, and offence of morals. The investigation is still under way, and we hope to reveal the criminal’s motives in the nearest future,” says the statement. The Day requested Roland FREUDENSTEIN, deputy director at the Centre for European Studies, Brussels, to comment on this case. The key question is, why can such a thing happen in wealthy and peaceful countries?
“First of all, this is a national tragedy for Belgians. The entire nation is in mourning. The king and royal family visit the victims. Why did this happen? Obviously, the killer acted on his own, there was no organization in the background. Therefore, everyone is surprised that it was not an act of terrorism. On the other hand, this man was a criminal and had had problems with the law over illegal possession of weapons. Thus there is nothing strange in his having guns and hand grenades. It appears that before going to downtown Liege on his killing spree, he had murdered his neighbors’ cleaning lady. But so far the murder’s real motives are not clear.
“Why did this happen in our country? Some individuals have psychic problems. If they prepare something of this kind, they could kill a lot of people. This is an obvious ingredient of any open society.”
Speaking of the Norwegian tragedy, can we draw parallels here? And isn’t there a tendency towards an increase in this sort of incidents?
“I am not sure about the overall increase in this type of incidents. But over the recent years the number of such random shootings has grown indeed. I don’t think that you can find one universal explanation for this phenomenon. We know of the shootings that took place in the US, Finland, Germany, Norway, and now in Belgium, too. I am afraid this is a side effect of the modern civilization, which we should at least try to moderate. However, we cannot be quite sure that we can completely prevent such acts.”
Nevertheless, how do you think can the government and society oppose such things? Is there a possibility, if any, to stop them from happening?
“I believe that fellow citizens, police, and other law enforcers should keep an eye out for people with unhealthy and violent behavior. In my view, the Liege case had a lot of signs indicating to an individual with a predisposition to violence. I think the authorities should have checked him before, when he was known to illegally possess weapons – and also they should have prevented him from amassing such numbers of weapons that he eventually turned out to have. But I am quite aware that here one cannot be absolutely certain.”
