30-May-18: In Belgium, another murderous "lone-wolf" attack by a criminal already on the police watch list

Soraya Belkacemi, left, and Lucille Garcia, right,
the two police officers murdered in the attack [Image Source]

In Belgium, a pointless act of terror inspired by one man's religious fervor resulted in the deaths on Tuesday of several innocents and some questions that don't seem likely to be properly answered quickly.

The basic facts as gleaned from Irish Times and Standard UK:

• Benjamin Herman, a Belgian man of 36 described in reports as a petty criminal and drug dealer who was serving time in prison, was let out Monday on what some reports have called a day-release for "family leave". (Reuters calls it a two-day pass.) One source says he "was due to travel back to his home town of Rochfort, just 40 miles from Liege". But didn't.
• Instead he attacked two police officers, women of 45 and 53, from behind about at about 10.30am on a lovely late spring morning on a pleasant boulevard in the centre of Liege, Belgium’s third city. Those two victims are Soraya Belkacemi, 53, and Lucille Garcia, 45. Their work involved checking parking meters. Soraya Belkacemi was the mother of 13-year-old twin daughters who earlier lost their father, also a police officer, and are now tragically orphaned of both parents.
• First slashing their throats from behind, he then stabbed them both and succeeded in seizing their handguns. (Evidently parking meter officers carry guns in Belgium.)
• A young man sitting in a car nearby was his next victim: he shot him dead too. He is Cyril Vangriecken, 22.
• The armed attacker then rushed into a high school building about 100 meters away and took two female employees hostage; one of them was a cleaner. He used her as a human shield in the subsequent confrontation with armed authorities. (He also, it is reported, "spared the life of the high school janitor he took hostage because she is Muslim, according to the woman, who was hailed Wednesday for her courage as she faced off with the madman.")
• Police were called. The school's children were evacuated as a gun battle erupted in which the prisoner managed to wound four of the police officers before they shot him dead.
• La Libre Belgique newspaper quoting police source says the Moslem attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” – “God is greatest” in Arabic. Irish Times says Beaupère declined to comment when asked about that.
• According to De Standaard, a Flemish-language newspaper in Belgium, police suspect he also carried out the murder a day earlier of "a criminal associate whose body was found south of Liege".
• So is he a terrorist? The authorities are being cagey. "Prime Minister Charles Michel says Herman was indirectly mentioned in state security reports on radicalization, but did not have his name on a list maintained by an anti-terror assessment group" according to USNews.

Cyril Vangriecken, 22, shot dead while sitting in a parked car
[Image Source]

Some questions that come to mind:

• According to state broadcaster RTBF Herman, who was born in 1982, had a criminal record that included a number of convictions for theft, assault and drugs offences.
• A Belgian politician, Georges Dallemagne, quoted by Irish Times, said Herman was already on a police watch-list arising from his radicalization in jail and his conversion there to Islam. So why was he freed unsupervised? How realistic was it that he would peacefully come back to his prison cell?
• There's more disturbing background according to one newspaper source. He "had been jailed numerous times"; he "appeared in national security documents"; he was "extremely violent" according to prison officers. Does this amount to a profile? Does it trigger any defensive measures on behalf of society?
• Liege police chief Christian Beaupère told a news conference “The goal of the assassin was to target the police”. Is this based on something they knew ahead of time? Were precautions taken? Did the two murdered officers know he was nearby? And is that a full and complete statement of the motivation for this cowardly, worthless explosion of lethal violence?
• The police chief was asked to confirm that the killer shouted “Allahu Akbar” in the course of his moments in the sun. M. Beaupère declined to comment on the question.
• These are not the first murders of innocents carried out by petty criminals inspired to Islamist violence while incarcerated. 
• Reuters: "The national crisis centre, on high alert since attacks by Islamic State in Paris and Brussels in recent years, said it had not raised its alert level – an indication the man was acting alone and follow-up attacks were not expected." So does Belgium have a strategy for dealing with lone-wolf attacks? They're not entirely mysterious, after all - they have some glaring factors in common. Do the authorities know this? No one ought to subscribe to the view that all members of any specific faith community are plotting to murder people, but are there any patterns worth taking into account when safe-guarding cities and populations?
• The politician Georges Dallemagne, who evidently [Irish Times] sits on several Belgian parliamentary security committees, tweeted: “The supervision of radicalised prisoners remains tragically flawed.” How concerned are Belgians to change that dangerous state of affairs?

After the murders [Image Source]

The phenomenon of the lone wolf is not a new one [click for past "Lone Wolf" posts of ours] and no more mysterious than any other aspect of criminology. Too often, public officials seem to use the term after criminal attacks have thrust them into the news by implying that if it's a "lone wolf" attack, what do you want from us? And if radicalization - to use the polite and somewhat vague term that most of the news industry does - is a factor, why aren't there more indications in the media of what's being done to identify individuals who have undergone it? 

Which is more problematic: avoiding any public discussion of it? Or burying its victims and comforting their families?

And let's agree that Belgium, with its vast problems involving terror and lone wolves acting individually as well as in large, well-organized packs, is only slightly different from most of Europe. And not only Europe.

UPDATE Wednesday May 30, 2018 at 11:00 pm: According to this report, ISIS, the Islamic State terror group today claimed one of its “soldiers” carried out the murder of the two policewomen and a student in Liege, quoting the jihadists' Amaq propaganda agency. “The author of the attack on the city of Liege in Belgium is a soldier of the Islamic State,” IS said in a statement published on Amaq’s Telegram account a day after the attack. It said “he led the attack in response to calls to target the countries of the US-led international coalition” which is fighting the jihadist group mainly in Syria.

27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US

The US State Department announced a $5M reward on Ahlam Tamimi's head in January 2018 [Source]

His Excellency Dr Mohammad Momani,
State Minister for Media Affairs and Communications,
Amman, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Dear Dr Momani,

We know from very recent media reports that Jordan is currently navigating treacherous waters. Its economy is weak, prices are rising, incomes are not and government subsidies on bread and other essentials are being slashed or removed. Jordan's GDP per capita is barely a quarter of the world's average, roughly the same as Albania's. In 1965 (according to the World Bank), Israel's GDP was 2.7 times the size of Jordan's; today (IMF estimates for 2018) it's almost 7 times as large. The two countries have roughly the same size population and roughly equivalent resources.

We're hearing that the Jordanian populace are angry and the fury is growing. There have been riots over the prices of basic foods.

On top of all that, there's been an upsurge in grand larceny as this report from yesterday shows:

A series of armed bank robberies in Amman has rattled Jordan, with some activists blaming the country's rising crime rate on alleged government corruption and failed economic policies. Activists say increased taxes and food and fuel prices have eroded the savings and salaries of the country's poor, which has pushed some to resort to serious crime. Armed bank robberies are rare in Jordan, but Amman has recently seen four heists in branches of the Societe Generale Bank Jordan and Arab Bank - Jordan... Many Jordanians have since expressed seeming delight in the robberies on social media, in a reflection of anti-government sentiment... Activists say government policies were the main catalyst contributing to the increase in violent crime, something that was rare until recently. They point to the recent proliferation of violent street gangs, car thefts and drug trafficking rings that have dominated some sections of Amman with impunity... ["Jordan bank robberies rattle Amman, activists blame government", Al Jazeera, April 21, 2018]

While Al Jazeera speaks of four heists, you probably know the Jordanian media speak of a larger number ["6th bank robbery in Amman since start of year", Jordan Times, April 18, 2018]. This surely worries you and your ministerial colleagues.

The specific way you chose to address this problem caught our attention and made us want to get in touch. Here's the full text of a report we spotted in an independent Jordanian newspaper from a few days ago, quoting you:

AMMAN: Government spokesperson and State Minister for Media Affairs Dr Mohammad Momani condemned the sweeping sympathy for bank robbers on social media today, Thursday, and described sympathisers as criminals. During the Minister’s weekly appearance on Radio Jordan, every Thursday, he said that publically [sic] condoning criminal activity is a crime. The same goes in various countries around the world, he claimed. On Jerusalem, Mr Momani reaffirmed that Trump’s decision to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv is illegal and hurtful to the peace process... It feeds radicalisation as it only fosters frustration and desperation, he underlined. ["Gov’t Speaker: Sympathising with Bank Robbers is Crime", Al Ghad, April 19. 2018]

You make some good points here. But if condoning bank robberies is a crime, Mr. Minister, then what do you say about protecting and honoring an unrepentant killer of children - the woman we describe below? And how do you justify allowing her to spread a lethal message of ultra-violent bigotry from the safe haven of Amman, Jordan? Why is she still living free in your country and sheltered by your legal system?

We traveled to Jordan a couple of times before - but not after - our child's murder at the hands of a Jordanian woman in 2001. These were brief stays and we weren't tourists. The meetings we had were with impressive decision-makers and thought-leaders. We enjoyed the experience. But to be clear, we don't claim special knowledge of your country. On the contrary - much about it puzzles us.

To illustrate: you underline (using Al Ghad's words) that radicalisation "fosters frustration and desperation". That sounds right to us. For what it's worth as non-Jordanians, we would encourage you and King Abdullah II to keep radicalisation of Jordanians as much under control as possible. Radicalisation is a widespread problem right across the Arab world. But it's not without solutions, provided the government leads the way. 

Dr Momani [Image Source]

But then what Jordan is doing to lead the way doesn't seem very well-advised. How your country has dealt with Ahlam Tamimi, Mr Minister, illustrates the point dramatically.

There's no need for us to tell you that among Jordanians, she's a celebrity, a figure of huge admiration, who has appeared often in your media and has a high public profile. As you surely know, she shared a public platform with several Jordanian lawmakers and a former Jordanian prime minister just a few weeks ago [We documented it here: "05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin"].

But this is an open letter. So we will explain to our readers that Mrs Tamimi is an admitted agent of the widely-outlawed jihadist organization Hamas, the first female to be recruited by them and – in terms of lives extinguished and grief inflicted – one of their most productive.

She boasts explicitly and often of the killings she masterminded and executed at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. She takes credit for choosing a site where significant numbers of children could be blown to pieces. Jewish children, of course; she makes clear that for her the conflict and the homicides are all about religion.

Tamimi faces Federal charges brought against her by the US government that were unsealed just a year ago, in March 2017. She is on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list with a reward on her head of $5M. Her extradition has been requested by the US government under the fully-in-force and undoubtedly valid 1995 extradition treaty your kingdom signed with the Clinton administration. By the way, several Jordanian felons have been extradited by Jordan to the United States since the treaty came into effect. Jordan and its courts pretend this is not so and journalists seem to be cowed into accepting the pretense.

For reasons most Jordanians understand and which your country's leadership obfuscates, Jordan says it will not hand her over to the US authorities. Tamimi herself understands how valuable your government's help has been to her and has publicly thanked the Kingdom of Jordan and its courts for this. She appreciates Jordan standing in solidarity with her. Her family has explicitly praised Jordan's judiciary - which of course is answerable to the king - for its "integrity, justice and patriotism" [source]. They recognize that they owe Jordan's leadership a large debt of thanks.

One might hope that there are large numbers of Jordanians who are sickened or at least embarrassed by this. Sadly not so much, it appears. For the past several years and up to today, we and several Jordanian friends who help us check the Jordanian media closely have not yet found a single instance of a Jordanian official or judge or religious leader or political commentator distancing your country from the horrific slaughter which elevated Ahlam Tamimi into a Jordanian hero.

We don't claim deep knowledge of your country. If we're mistaken and there is in fact meaningful outrage over the admiration she attracts among Jordanians, please do tell us.

We're left to wonder about all of this. Not one word of criticism in any part of your media. No public arguments. No evident self-examination. No dissent from the popular view that this homicidal sociopath is a champion of Jordan, a figure for your society's children to grow up and emulate.

Then there's the disturbing matter of one of your country's most admired educational centers, the Jordan Media Institute.

As the political official responsible for Jordan's media, you're surely aware of the matters we described here ["10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred"]. Your government created a school for training a new generation of Arabic-language journalists along what were to be Western lines, and right there on their website those best-and-brightest budding editors and reporters declared that Ahlam Tamimi was their role-model.

That astounding, appalling veneration for a confessed mass-murderer of Jewish children remained on view and uncontradicted right up until we publicized it. We successfully persuaded several (not all) of its foreign supporters to back off and to discontinue their funding.

The school's response was to silently, without any public explanation or attention, take down the entire site and pretend the scandal never happened. We documented all of this in articles we published on December 11, 2014; January 11, 2015; January 16, 2015; January 19, 2015; January 23, 2015; and February 4, 2015. 

By the way, we tried to speak directly with the JMI. Our attempts to get into a dialogue with its leadership were rebuffed in a blunt, ugly and completely unacceptable way. For all anyone knows, the students who graduated from the JMI since 2015 have taken up positions in the Arabic language journalism industry fully committed to the idea that their professional role-model is a mass-murdering Jordanian female who is on the run from the US legal system.

What impact will that have on your plans to reduce radicalisation and counter all the frustration and desperation? Perhaps not much given that Jordan's press freedom is in such bad shape:

Jordan drops two places on World Press Freedom index | Jordan Times | Mohammad Ghazal | Feb 12, 2015 | 21:44 | AMMAN — Jordan has dropped two places on the World Press Freedom Index 2015, ranking 143rd among 180 countries, as the government said it will continue to develop media freedom in the Kingdom. The Reporters Without Borders annual index released Thursday showed that Jordan continued a decline in press freedom, as it was ranked 141st in the 2014 index and 134th in the 2013 index. At the Arab level, Jordan ranked 11th... Commenting on the report, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Mohammad Momani said: “We will continue to develop our freedom of expression.”

You are quoted there yourself, saying you will "continue to develop [Jordan's] freedom of expression". That was three years ago.

So how well did you do in the following years? Not too well. In the most recent index, Jordan is in 138th place - lower than in 2013, lower than in 2016. Jordan's press freedom is almost at the bottom of the world league... and sinking, as we wrote here.

Here's something else we wrote back then that deals directly with how to defeat radicalisation:

A society claiming to be at war with the terrorists and aspiring to "continue to develop" its "freedom of expression" and "media freedom" has to have a strategy that goes beyond self-aggrandizing press statements. It also needs to be substantially more upfront with the outside world - and with itself, it seems - about the lethal support for jihad that infects the ranks of key parts of its population, including some of the journalists whose future careers it is proudly hailing... ["13-Feb-15: Jordanian accuracy"]

It's still relevant today. 

We still hope and expect to see Jordan comply with its international treaty obligations described well here ["Pressure on Jordan: Refusal to extradite mastermind of deadly 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem contravenes international law and agreements", Michelle Munneke - American University Washington College of Law, National Security Law Brief, October 28, 2017] and hand Tamimi over to the US so she can be brought to justice.

If Jordan's leadership is sincere about suppressing radicalism, it will share that aspiration.

Sincerely,

Frimet and Arnold Roth

Jerusalem

(A version of this open letter appeared originally in Times of Israel on April 23, 2018 under the title "Extradite Tamimi: An open letter to Jordan’s media minister". If you are a friend or acquaintance of the minister, please pass this along to him. He's sure to want to respond to us.)