比利时检察官周三表示,周二在比利时列日市发生的一名男子杀害三人的事件是恐怖主义行为。
涉嫌凶手本杰明·赫尔曼多次从背后持刀刺伤两名女警察,然后夺过她们的手枪在她们倒地后将她们开枪打死。赫尔曼还枪杀了在一辆路过汽车里的乘客。在警察将他击毙之前,他还在附近一所学校劫持至少一名女性人质。
调查人员表示,赫尔曼的做法在伊斯兰国组织的在线视频中受到鼓励。
检察官说,赫尔曼在滥杀时多次高叫“真主伟大”。
比利时自2015年1月以来一直处于高度警戒状态,当时警方破获了列日市附近一个小镇的恐怖活动小组,这个小组正密谋袭击警察。该小组也与2015年11月巴黎发生的伊斯兰国袭击事件的主谋有关。那次袭击造成130人死亡。
2016年3月,伊斯兰国组织的自杀式杀手袭击了布鲁塞尔的一个机场和地铁站,造成32人死亡。
A man who murdered three people Tuesday in the Belgium city of Liege engaged in an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Benjamin Herman repeatedly stabbed two female officers with a knife from behind before seizing their handguns and shooting them as they laid on the ground. Herman also shot to death a man who was a passenger in a passing car. Police fatally shot Herman after taking at least one woman hostage at a nearby school.
Investigators said Herman’s methods were encouraged in online videos produced by the Islamic State militant group.
Prosecutors said Herman yelled “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic expression for “God is great” several times during the killing spree.
Belgium has been on high alert since January 2015, when authorities neutralized a terror cell in a town near Liege that was plotting an attack on police. The cell was linked to the mastermind of the November 2015 IS attacks on Paris that killed 130 people.
In March 2016, IS suicide attackers targeted a Brussels airport and subway station, killing 32 people.