The alarm first sounded in Antwerp, whose gigantic port long ago became one of the main entrances for cocaine into Europe. It then spread to Brussels, where for more than a year, due to alleged settling of accounts between drug gangs, they have become almost a routine in the Belgian capital. The country’s judges now confirm what various voices have been warning for some time: drug trafficking networks are so widespread in Belgium – and they exercise such power in the shadows – that the country is on the way to becoming a narco-state. Only a “structural” strategy will prevent it from falling into the worst, they warn.
“We face an organized threat that undermines our institutions,” warns an investigating judge from Antwerp in an open letter published this Monday under condition of anonymity on the official website of the . In the country “extensive mafia structures have taken hold, which have become a parallel force that challenges not only the police, but also the judiciary,” emphasizes the judge, who reveals that she had to spend four months hiding under police surveillance due to threats and intimidation for her investigations into drug trafficking cases. Something that, he notes, has also happened to several of his colleagues, many of whom live under police protection.
In 2022, the then Belgian Minister of Justice, Vincent van Quickenborne, also together with his family and under redoubled police protection due to threats from drug trafficking. A situation that was replicated in the neighboring Netherlands, where both Princess Amalia of Orange, and then Prime Minister and today Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, also received reinforced protection after being threatened by criminal gangs.
The judge’s letter published now is part of a campaign by the Belgian judicial system to denounce the lack of resources and security that afflicts them in the framework of a fight against drug trafficking that requires more state resources. “If the judiciary begins to function poorly, it is a dangerous attack on our democracy,” the judge points out in this sense, recalling that “it is increasingly difficult to find judges willing to do their job” in this type of cases.
“Are we evolving towards a narco-state?” the judge adds, and then goes on to list the characteristics that mark this concept and that she considers are being fulfilled in Belgium: a multi-million dollar “parallel” illegal economy, corruption that “is permeating the institutions” and violence and “intimidation” of justice.
“Are we exaggerating? According to our drug commissioner, this evolution has already begun. My colleagues and I share that opinion,” he adds in reference to the repeated warnings of the federal anti-drug commissioner, Ine Van Wymersch, about the dangerous path towards a narco-state in which the country is immersed. Van Wymersch, a former prosecutor, took up the position of anti-drug commissioner in February 2023. A position with which the former government of liberal Alexander De Croo sought to address crime linked to drug trafficking, an issue unresolved until today.
Last September, the current Minister of the Interior, Bernard Quintin, even raised the possibility of soldiers patrolling together with the police some of the most problematic drug hotspots. In Brussels and, especially, around the train stations, within the framework of intensified surveillance that for the moment does not seem to have reported great results: so far this year alone, more than fifty shootings have been reported in the Belgian capital related to settling scores between gangs. About twenty of them, during the summer.
The most spectacular case occurred in February, when a group of people in a capital metro station with rifles kalashnikov and then fled through the subway tunnels. They have not yet been arrested.
In her letter, which has been published after a meeting of the judiciary with the federal Justice Commission to debate the “structural” problems in the face of the criminal threat, the judge proposes several short-term measures to allow judges to continue doing their work without fear or threats: legislation that allows them to work “anonymously”, a “permanent point of contact” with the Ministry of the Interior and Justice and a protocol for threatened judges; insurance against “material and personal damage” to judges and family members in the event of an attack and the “protection” of the addresses of judges in national registries. But the reforms must have a “priority structural” character and address various profound challenges in the country, adds the judge, who calls for a “sustainable strategy” that especially takes into account the problem of the constant use of cell phones – despite being prohibited – by prisoners, among others.
“The question is not whether the rule of law is threatened, because it already is. The question is how our State will defend itself,” he says.
