Lola has seen it all. She had come for a drink with a friend this Friday afternoon at the Halles Saint-Géry. “Two girls entered the bar, closing the doors, saying that they had to do it slowly and above all not provoke a crowd movement. We saw a man on the balcony, with a bulletproof vest and a weapon, like a war weapon that you hold in both hands.” She didn’t feel threatened because “he wasn’t threatening or targeting anyone, he was just sticking his chest out on his balcony, but in this period in Brussels, that’s not very smart.”
The instruction was given to take refuge in the bar, “with my friend, we took refuge immediately in the cellar because we said to ourselves that he would not be able to come that far, it was more on”.
“A youthful stupidity that you can do at 22, he will not be fired.”
The man, employed at the nearby Mapa Mundo bar, was finally arrested by special forces. He did not seem to have realized that his attitude could cause such psychosis and the intervention of so many police officers. “My employee was at home, cleaning his airsoft gun in his window with a bulletproof vest. He was probably spotted by passers-by who alerted the police,” comments Hubert Blanquet, the boss of Mappa Mundo.
The police who also intervened in large numbers and very quickly, “and I find that great, it’s reassuring that everything happened so quickly”. The boss believes that it is “a youthful stupidity that one can do at 22 years old, he will not be fired, and there will be no disciplinary sanction, even if he made me losing two hours of operation on a sunny Friday afternoon,” he quips.
The young man is currently being arrested and interviewed by the police after an intervention which was carried out peacefully. “It’s not at all the profile of a criminal, he’s even a total innocent person.”
Police have established a security perimeter in the city center of Brussels on Friday 12 April 2024, at the Place Saint-Gery – Sint-Goriksplein in the Quartier Dansaert – Dansaertwijk. According to the first information an armed person has entrenched himself in an apartment building. BELGA PHOTO HATIM KAGHATThe Saint-Géry district in the center of Brussels was closed off for several hours this Friday. ©Sylvain Anciaux