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Johan Leman, 22 June 2022

Since September 2021, at least 12 shootings have taken place in Molenbeek alone, more than 1 per month, most of them within a radius of 1 km. For those who know Low Molenbeek: Ransfortstraat, Gentse steenweg, Paalstraat, Bonnevie, Merchtemse steenweg, Menenstraat… it is all very close to each other. You can walk down all these streets together in half an hour, not even jogging. If the suggestion of the federal public prosecutor is correct, that this can be a consequence of the Sky ECC investigation, where a competition is going on between drug-dealing control groups to fill in a power vacuum, then one knows that such a thing ends with a group effectively controlling the area in the end, after which the dealing can spread over shops and pubs again and with racketeering. The fact that there seems to be a lot of shooting at the legs seems to point in that direction.

Assuming that some families in Molenbeek are also involved in dealing, it seems unlikely that the size of the area in question is just a local matter. There is no doubt that international supply, and interference from supra-local organisations, are also involved.

This is a serious matter. It is not something you just leave to the local police. To dismiss it with the argument that the local police are the best informed, is unacceptable.

In the second half of the 1970s, I spent some time in Sicily as part of my anthropological doctoral fieldwork. What is happening here in Brussels reminds me of some of the shootings I saw there as well. There too, this was never a purely local matter. The big mafia boss (Di Cristina) of a small town like Riesi in Sicily was not shot for nothing when he was on his way to Palermo for a meeting.

So yes, this must be dealt with federally and urgently! Otherwise we are heading straight for a mafia-like division of the Brussels canal zone.

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