Belgian police reported this Tuesday (18) that they arrested eight people and carried out searches of 18 homes in Brussels and the neighboring city of Leuven in an operation that, according to information from the Politico website, is related to death threats against Julien Moinil, one of the country’s main prosecutors working to combat organized crime and drug trafficking.
“The main suspects have a criminal record for organized drug trafficking. They operate in the Albanian criminal underworld,” the Belgian Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The episode illustrates how Belgium, home to important European Union institutions (such as the European Commission, the bloc’s main executive body, based in Brussels), is transforming into a narcostate.
This was argued by an Antwerp judge, who published an anonymous letter on the Belgian Justice website in October asking for action to be taken.
“What is happening today in our district and beyond is no longer a classic crime problem. We are facing an organized threat that undermines our institutions,” the magistrate wrote.
“Extensive mafia-like structures have taken root, becoming a parallel power that challenges not only the police, but also the judiciary. The consequences are serious: are we turning into a narco-state? No way, do you think? Exaggerated? According to our drug commissioner [Ine Van Wymersch]this transformation is already underway. My colleagues and I share this concern,” the judge added.
It was a reference to statements made earlier this year by Van Wymersch, who stated that Belgium needs to “act now” to avoid turning into a narcostate.
According to the European Union Agency on Drugs (Euda), the Port of Antwerp is today the main point for drug movement in the European Union.
A report from Euda pointed out that cocaine seizures in Europe reached a record in 2023 for the seventh consecutive year, with 419 tons seized, and Belgium led the ranking of seizures, with 123 tons.
In the anonymous letter from October, the judge who wrote the message said that drug trafficking corruption “infiltrates” Belgian institutions, with the payment of bribes, which can be proven by the arrests of “officials in key positions at the port [da Antuérpia]customs agents, police officers, municipal employees and, regrettably, even employees of the Justice system, both inside prisons and right here, in this building”, he wrote, citing the court of inquiry where he works.
“A Snapchat account is enough” to order attacks in Belgium today, says judge
This presence of organized crime has brought violence to the previously quiet Belgian streets: according to a report from public broadcaster RTBF, from the beginning of the year until the end of October, 78 shootings linked to drug trafficking were recorded in Brussels, which left seven people dead.
“And there are also kidnappings, mutilations, acts of torture,” Jean-Michel Lemoine, head of the criminal division of the Brussels Federal Judicial Police, told RTBF.
The judge in the anonymous October letter wrote that “all it takes is a Snapchat account” to order “an attack on a house with a bomb or weapons of war, a home invasion or a kidnapping” in Belgium today.
Faced with this threat, the Belgian government seeks to intensify actions to combat drug trafficking. Recently, Interior Minister Bernard Quintin announced a plan for the military to operate in the neighborhoods most affected by drug-related violence in Brussels to help the police.
In October, during a visit to Antwerp by US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever asked the Donald Trump government for help in combating transnational drug trafficking.
On that occasion, according to information from the German agency DW, De Wever praised the current US military operation against drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
“This is great news for us, because drug trafficking criminals know no borders,” said the prime minister.
Noem responded that the US will continue to collaborate with Belgian authorities to combat “transnational criminal organizations that are killing our people, poisoning our citizens and our countries.”
The Belgian situation was the subject of irony from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
After Trump’s threat to send the military to combat jihadist groups that kill Christians in Nigeria and the start of the American operation against drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, which Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship considers an excuse for a regime change in Venezuela, the Russian foreign minister said that Washington should carry out attacks in Belgium.
“Instead of targeting Nigeria and Venezuela with anti-drug operations and [potenciais] oil field seizures, the US should probably focus on eradicating this social evil in Belgium. The US already has troops there and will not need to pursue small vessels with crews of three people each”, joked Lavrov, at a press conference last week.
