Iranian held after Belgian judge and court clerk shot dead

BELGIAN police have arrested an Iranian suspect after a man pulled a gun during a Brussels court hearing and shot dead a woman judge and court clerk before fleeing, the public prosecutor’s office said.

“A suspect has been questioned and identified,” spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor, Jean-Jacques Meilleur, said after Thursday’s double murder.

A judicial source said the suspect was a 47-year-old Iranian man who had been identified by witnesses of the courtroom drama that shook Belgium. He reportedly said he had been motivated by revenge.

Police approached the man in a Brussels park on Thursday evening in order to check his identity, but he pulled out a gun and began shooting in the air, the source said.

The man was wounded by police, arrested, and later identified as a suspect in the killings.

Belgian interior minister Annemie Turtelboom thanked the police for securing “the swift arrest of the alleged culprit of the double murder“.

Offering her condolences to the victims’ families, Turtelboom said she hoped that justice could quickly be meted out for “a crime that until Thursday was unknown in Belgian courtrooms.”

On Thursday morning a man, who had been present throughout the hearing in the ill-fated tribunal, “pulled out a revolver, and fired at the judge and her clerk, killing both,” said Meilleur.

The tribunal, which hears family disputes and other civil cases, is close to the imposing Palace of Justice in the heart of the Belgian capital.

The gunman “was briefly pursued by one of the lawyers present but he managed to flee on foot,” Meilleur added. A major search was launched for the assailant.

The victims were 60-year-old judge Isabelle Brandon and her court clerk Andre Bellemans.

A minute’s silence was observed by judges and lawyers in the Palace of Justice in honour of their deceased colleagues, with members of the judiciary visibly shocked at the events.

Security in judicial buildings and prisons in Belgium has long been a source of concern, with many escapes in recent years.

Last August, masked men helped three suspects escape the Palace of Justice, taking prison guards hostage in the process.

Around the same time there was a spectacular escape from a prison in the north with the use of a hijacked helicopter.