1983 - Belgian supermarkets - Brussels Brabant massacres

[TonyGosling]

Operation Gladio: NATO's 1985 Brabant Massacres in Belgian Supermarkets

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjD3hEQD5_8

Extracted from BBC film

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHXjO8wHsA

The secrets of Gladio
Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Observer, 7 June 1992, pages 53-54
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/gladio_obs_7jun1992.htm
...More important were the apparently random shootings in Belgian supermarkets which ended with a particularly nasty incident in 1983 in the town of Aalst, a few miles from Brussels, which became known as the Brabant-Walloon massacres. Senator Lallemand has linked the killings to 'the work of foreign governments or of intelligence services working for foreigners, a terrorism aimed a destabilising democratic society'.
Martial Lekeu, a former member of the Belgian gendarmerie who was close to the investigation of the atrocities, that members of his own force were involved in the murders and that official inquiries into it were aborted.
The British authorities, leaders with Washington in the scheme, are refusing all comment on Gladio. But information about Britain's role has come from parliamentary and other investigations carried out elsewhere in Europe.
Belgian documents, starting with Spaak's letter of 1949, show what a major role Britain has constantly played. Papers presented to the parliamentary inquiry set up in Belgium on Gladio show that in Belgium in 1981 and in Britain in 1982 Belgian personnel received training from British instructors. In April 1982 Belgians prepared for a Gladio exercise involving Britain and the US, codenamed Blackbird, which was called off at the last minute when Argentina invaded the Falklands.
In 1990 Colonel S. Schwebach of Belgian intelligence reported to his Defence Minister that an exercise called Waterland had taken place the previous year. In it, members of the Royal Marines Special Boat Squadron parachuted into the seas off the coast of Flanders, were guided ashore by Belgian civilians and went on to simulate the dynamiting of the massive canal locks at Zeebrugge.
There were even reports, so far unconfirmed, in Belgium that Belgian personnel had been part of a recent Gladio exercise in Britain aimed at demonstrating that Dover docks could be put out of action were the Russians to occupy Kent....


Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into Gladio, as summarised in Belgium periodical Statewatch, January/February 1992.
http://www.statewatch.org/docbin/bulletin/bul-2-1.pdf

MILITARY
Belgian Parliamentary Commission Enquiry into Gladio The Belgian parliamentary commission has ended its investigation into the `Stay Behind', or Gladio, network. Its conclusions show that the Belgian network was jointly organised by the STC/MOB (a branch of the civilian security service) and the SDRA 8 (of the military security service). In addition to functioning as a resistance network in the event of a Soviet attack on western Europe, the organisation also had contingency plans for evacuation of VIPs, the removal of security service secret documents and maintaining contact with government ministers.
The first `Stay Behind' network, codenamed "Sussex ll", was set up in December 1944 with the approval of Premier Spaak, when Sir Stewart Menzies (Chief of MI6) visited Brussels. In 1948 the Brussels Pact created the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU) which by 1951 had become the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), based in Paris. A letter, written by Belgian Premier Van Houtte in March 1953, discusses coordination and technical arrangements between the CPC and SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), clearly linking the CPC with NATO.
During 1957 the CPC created two sub-committees, one of which went on to become the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC) and was responsible for coordinating the `Stay Behind' networks in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States. Its peacetime duties included elaborating the directives for the network, developing its clandestine capability and organising bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime it was to plan stay behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE; organisers were to activate clandestine bases and organise operations from there. Organisers would receive diplomatic immunity for their actions.
Between 1980 and 1986 the ACC arranged three-yearly international exercises to test its radiocommunications network and the collation of information. These exercises were codenamed `Oregon'. In addition there were annual exercises to test the professionalism and performance of the network: 1985 WODAN (Belgium/Holland); 1985 THUNDERBOLT (Belgium/US); 1987 SEABIRD 1 (Belgium/US); 1988 SEABIRD 11 (Belgium/Holland); 1989 SEABIRD 111 (Belgium/Italy); 1990 MARGARITA (Belgium/Britain).
The last ACC meeting took place on the 23-24 October 1990, and members discussed the re-orientation of the ACC. The Belgian security service suggested a policy that would allow the network to operate more broadly in `crisis' situations. Apparently the `stay behind' network had been activated during the Zaire crisis in 1980, but failed to intervene because of operational problems.
Contact between the ACC and SHAPE (NATO) was carried out by the Clandestine Planning Committee. When, in 1968, the Chair of the CPC moved to Brussels it became a part of the Belgian military security service (SGR) known as section SDRA 11 and served as the international secretariat of the CPC.
During the Belgian parliamentary commission enquiry the head of the SGR, General Van Calster gave evidence that was misleading. When questioned about the structure of the SGR he omitted to mention SDRA 11. Colonel Detrembleur, head of SDRA 11, refused to answer the commissions enquiries on his department, asserting that he was bound by NATO confidentiality. He claimed that the commission would need to obtain SHAPE authority for him to answer any questions, and he doubted if this would be forthcoming as it had been refused to other countries in the past. The commission dropped their investigations into the NATO connection.
Although the security service witnesses confirmed the existence of a functioning NATO security system against subversion, a NATO Security Committee and its National Security Authorities, much of this information had been published by Stef Janssens and Jan Willems in their book Gladio. According to their investigations NATO members must install a National Security Authority which is responsible for implementing NATO security guidelines. It meets twice yearly in the NATO Security Committee, which is directed by the NATO Security Bureau. The National Security Bureau is the most important advisor to the NATO Secretary General who is based in Evere in Belgium.

[TonyGosling]

Do the families of those murdered know about this?
If not why haven't Belgian police told them?

Soldiers of Fortune
Some possible NATO mercenary killers revealed on twitter
Guillaume Vogeleer Belgium mercenary (first photo on the left) Jack Shirley & Tony Poe (Second Photo)
https://twitter.com/thewakeupcall09/status/787097601422262272

[TonyGosling]

'I am The Giant': Ex-cop makes deathbed confession that he was the ringleader of Belgian robbery gang who killed 28 people in the 1980s
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5012179/Ex-cop-s-deathbed-conf ession-reveals-role-Belgian-gang.html

'Crazy Brabant Killers' terrorised towns around capital Brussels in early 1980s
Carried out more than a dozen robbery raids killing 28 in brutal three-year spree
But identities of gang members have remained a mystery in Belgium for 30 years
Ex police officer has said on deathbed that he was ringleader called 'The Giant'
Other members included 'The Killer' and getaway driver known as 'The Old Man'
By JULIAN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 12:49, 24 October 2017 | UPDATED: 14:14, 24 October 2017

A former policeman has revealed on his deathbed that he was the ringleader of a Belgian robbery gang that killed 28 people in the 1980s.

The retired officer revealed himself to be 'The Giant', the notorious leader of the 'Crazy Brabant Killers' who terrorised towns around the capital, Brussels.

His brother revealed that the policeman, named only as C.B., from Aalst, near the capital, had confessed to his involvement in the gruesome crime spree before his death.

The identity of the gang's fearsome members has remained a mystery that has troubled Belgium for 30 years.

But officials have now confirmed reports that detectives have been working on the new lead for months and were optimistic about finally identifying the group, also called the 'Nivelles Gang'.

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Its bloody, three-year spree has long fuelled conspiracy theories involving right-wing plots and official cover-ups during the era of the Cold War.

As well as The Giant, other members included 'The Killer' and a getaway driver known as 'The Old Man'.

They staged over a dozen raids, often on supermarkets, sometimes taking barely petty cash but gratuitously gunning down customers, staff, and even children.

In 1985, after killing eight people at a store they burst into wearing grotesque face paint and disguises, they vanished as abruptly as they had appeared three years earlier.

At the weekend, a man told broadcaster VTM that his brother, a retired policeman in Aalst near Brussels, confessed to him as he lay dying two years ago that he was the tall suspected ringleader of the gang who came to be known as 'The Giant'.

'In the beginning I was in denial because I really struggled with it,' the unnamed man sobbed on camera. But today I can say formally that this is my brother.'

Newspapers published archive photo-fits from 1980s 'wanted' posters that once papered the country along with off-duty snaps of the towering, bespectacled former special forces gendarme.

'I hope for the relatives of the victims that we can close this chapter soon,' Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Monday. Ministers have convened investigators to review the new evidence.

A former Belgian lawmaker who took part in a parliamentary inquiry into the killing spree said suggestions of involvement by police officers were previously ignored by investigators. At the time, the proficiency of the killers in handling weapons and evading capture raised such suspicions.

Despite the possible identification, the motives of the gang remain unclear. Local media said the suspect was dismissed in 1981 from the Diana Group, an elite police commando unit.

The confession may revive suspicions about shadowy establishment support for the 'Killers' during Europe's 'Years of Lead', when left- and right-wing urban guerrillas also troubled Italy, Germany and France.

Errors in the Brabant Killers case and in the 1990s hunt for child killer Marc Dutroux drove Belgium to replace a patchwork of forces with the federal police, which ministers credit with tracing the Islamic State cell that struck Paris and Brussels.

But memories of past failures, including the oft-cited Brabant mystery, still provide fuel for critics of the police.

Among their crimes, the gang robbed a grocery at Nivelles in 1983, killing a couple who stopped at an all-night fuel station next door and then shooting police who arrived at the scene.

In November 1985, they stormed into a supermarket in Aalst brandishing pump-action shotguns. The frenzied shooting of people cowering on the floor and a nine-year-old girl waiting in a car outside helped fix the gang's 'crazy' image in the public imagination. But it was also their last.

Investigators believe the most murderous of the trio -- The Killer -- was hit by police and either died or was killed by the others, who then disposed of the body where it was never found.