The fact that the Defense organization can identify Belgian soldiers with possible links to the extreme right-wing environment proves that the army has “grasped the problem”. Chief of Staff Michel Hofman said this on Wednesday evening in Terzake, where he came to give text and explanation about the Jürgen Conings case. The fact that the wanted soldier was able to take heavy weapons from Defense with him last week despite his reputation, is a “combination of very unfortunate circumstances that we never have or would have anticipated,” it said.
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Police and Defense have been looking for Jürgen Conings for more than a week now, the radicalized corporal who took weapons from a Defense depot last Monday and in several letters issued threats against the government, the virologists and his employer. He has since disappeared without a trace.
Especially the fact that the man was given access to an arms depot of Defense while he previously received a disciplinary sanction for his extreme right-wing ideology and was even on a list of the Ocad threat analysis body, raises questions. Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder (PS) had to explain it on Wednesday in the National Defense Committee of the Chamber and stated that the information about Conings has been dealt with within the military intelligence service ADIV, but has not progressed further within the hierarchy.
Michel Hofman, the army chief of staff, is not pointing the finger at anyone for the time being. “An operation is still underway to find Conings. I think that’s the biggest concern: that we find him alive and that no victims will be made, ”he told Terzake on Wednesday evening. Hofman did emphasize that it may be a “shared responsibility”, which may have to do with “the way in which the information flows within the ADIV”. But military intelligence did take action with the information it received about Conings, the chief of staff stressed. The unit of the radicalized corporal has also intervened, already in 2019, by imposing a disciplinary punishment on the man, it said.
Eleven soldiers were denied entry
In the meantime, the Ministry of Defense has denied access to weapon depots and other sensitive places eleven soldiers who are being tracked by the intelligence services because of links with the far-right environment. A total of 28 soldiers are being watched for far-right sympathies. For Hofman, this is the sign that Defense “can grasp the problem”. “We have identified the people who may follow extremist ideas or ideologies,” he said. What happened to Conings “is a confluence of very unfortunate circumstances that we never have or would have anticipated.”
Hofman could not say much about the threat that the wanted soldier still poses at the moment. “All I can say is that he’s still armed and hasn’t been found yet, but he hasn’t made any victims,” he said. “I can only join what the attorney (from the federal public prosecutor’s office Frédéric Van Leeuw, ed.) said, “seek someone in confidence and surrender.” Of course we must and we will treat him with all the rights he has in such a case. ”
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