CORONAVIRUS
Belgian forces comb woods for anti-lockdown sniper
Soldier on the run has been disciplined for far-right extremism
Armed police sealed off a vast expanse of forest in Hoge Kempen national park
DURSUN AYDEMIR/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
Almost 300 police and special forces with armoured vehicles and helicopters were sweeping a Flemish forest this morning for a heavily armed soldier with extremist views who has vowed to fight to the death against coronavirus lockdowns.
Corporal Jürgen Conings, 46, a military shooting instructor, deserted his barracks on Monday and is thought to have a handgun and an FN P90 sub-machinegun with ammunition that can pierce bulletproof vests.
Shots were heard last night as special forces entered woodland at Maasmechelen, in Belgium’s 30,000-acre Hoge Kempen national park, where Conings is thought to have holed up. His booby-trapped Audi SUV was found yesterday about six miles from where the operation began, with four anti-tank missile launchers and munitions in the boot.
Jurgen Conings was on an intelligence list of far-right extremists
Bomb disposal units defused a hand grenade wired up to explode when the car’s doors were opened and police were warned that the rogue soldier had combat experience as a sniper.
It has emerged that Conings was disciplined for expressing racist and far-right views last year and transferred out of the military police to be given a post as a weapons instructor with a key to arms depots in his Leopoldsburg barracks. He was on a list compiled by Belgium’s military intelligence of about 30 personnel known to have extreme right-wing views.
Alexander de Croo, the prime minister, has demanded to know how someone with Conings’s background and record “has access to weapons and can even take those weapons”.
Before going on the run he left notes with his family, saying he “could no longer live in a society where politicians and virologists have taken everything away from us” and “would join the resistance and would not surrender”.
Conings threatened Professor Marc Van Ranst, a prominent virologist with left-wing links who has gone into hiding. The soldier is believed to have spent much of Tuesday reconnoitring targets before realising he was being tailed. Army sources told the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws that Conings was “an extreme right-wing weapons nut who does not shy away from violence” and “an antivaxer who hates Van Ranst”.
From a safe house Van Ranst told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper: “How someone on the list can have a key to steal missile launchers is a mystery.”
