A manhunt is under way in Belgium for a heavily armed soldier with links to the extreme right who has made threats against a high-profile virologist who backed the country’s Covid lockdowns.
Named only as Jurgen C, the 46-year-old soldier went missing after taking at least one rocket launcher, a submachine gun, a smaller pistol and a bulletproof vest from his barracks on Monday.
Special forces and police were searching Dilserbos forest, near Dilsen in Limburg, on Tuesday night after the man’s Audi car was discovered, but the fugitive is yet to be apprehended. The federal prosecutor’s office said that “the most worrying weapons were found in the car”.
The man’s girlfriend had alerted the army after reportedly discovering two suicide letters to friends and family at his home in Lanklaar in which he said he no longer wished to live “in such a society ruled by politicians and virologists”.
The man, a corporal who specialises in firearms training, wrote that he would “join the resistance and would not surrender without a fight”, according to the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper. He has known links to figures in the extreme right of Belgian politics, and was on the radar of anti-terrorist authorities.
Full article over at The Guardian
