The men suspected of shooting dead Brussels police officer Nordine El Talbi in Jette on the night of 12 to 13 October had allegedly killed an Albanian man in Ixelles earlier the same evening, according to De Standaard.
The first shooting took place at 17:50 on Monday 12 October in the entrance hall of an apartment building on Rue Wiertz in Ixelles, in the heart of the European quarter.
The attack happened while it was still daylight and the area was busy with residents and workers from the nearby EU institutions.
The victim, an Albanian man, was hit by seven or eight pistol shots. Witnesses said they saw three or four men fleeing the scene.
The man had no criminal record in Belgium. However, several sources told the newspaper that the killing bears the hallmarks of a drug-related settling of scores and appears to have been a contract murder.
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A few hours later, the same evening, Brussels police officer Nordine El Talbi, 41, was fatally shot while monitoring a parked car on Avenue Carton de Wiart in Jette.
That vehicle had been stolen earlier in the evening during a carjacking in Walloon Tubize.
After the officer’s killing, the Brussels public prosecutor’s office said at an initial press conference that there appeared to be no link between the two shootings.
Investigators are now said to be convinced that the two attacks were connected and carried out by the same group. The prosecutor’s office has not confirmed this, but De Standaard reported that CCTV footage led to a decisive breakthrough.
The suspected gunmen fled abroad after the shootings. Less than a week later, three were arrested in Almería, Spain, reportedly while heading towards Morocco.
A fourth suspect was detained at a railway station in Paris. One of the four is a minor. According to De Standaard, all four have since been transferred back to Belgium.
Two other suspects were arrested in Brussels shortly after the shootings. One was released by the pre-trial review chamber because of insufficient evidence, while the other remains in custody.
All the suspects are from Brussels and are known to police for alleged links to the drugs underworld.
