Crime in Belgium

This remains however very limited in scale, the occurrence of Belgian nationals directly linked to international terrorism hovering around 0.1-1 per million inhabitants for the last decade.

The two Tunisian nationals who assassinated Commander Massoud in Afghanistan had fake Belgian passports, and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) has links in Belgium too - there were arrests in Brussels and Antwerp of individuals involved in the Madrid bombing.

In an open letter addressed to Moureaux, ten employees of this American advertising agency cited over 150 attacks on their staff by locals as principal reason for their departure.

The case became emblematic of perceived Walloon socialist plotting to let neighbourhoods degrade (by inviting immigrants and offering them social security) to create socialist-voting poor constituents.

According to Urban Audit, in 2001, Brussels had the fourth highest number of recorded crimes of European capitals (behind Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and virtually on a par with Helsinki).