An employee of the Brussels public transport authority STIB has been assaulted at his home in Molenbeek after being tracked down by a man caught fare-dodging.
The victim is a ticket inspector for the STIB, and caught the man passing through the ticket barrier without paying. He stopped the man immediately and issued a fine of €107. The fare-dodger immediately made threats that he was going to get revenge later.
Because the fine document issued by the inspector bore his name, the offender was able to track him down to his home. Ticket inspectors have long argued against their names being shown on fine documents. At the same time, ticket inspectors on the country’s trains were recently allowed to work without name badges, to avoid similar cases of harassment.
Cindy Arents, a spokesperson for the transport authority, said the organisation was in favour of replacing the inspectors’ names on the fine document with a code number to make identification by outsiders impossible. But for the time being, the law requires a name.
The attack took place at the end of November, as the fare dodger stood waiting for the inspector to come home. He attacked the man, in circumstances that have yet to be revealed, a spokesperson for the Brussels prosecutor’s office said. “The man has been arrested and will appear in court on 20 December,” the spokesperson told La Capitale.
The STIB, meanwhile, said it was unaware of the case. “We take very seriously all cases of aggression against our staff. We are not aware of this case.”
Alan Hope
The Brussels Times
