Westland New Post

Last updated

Westland New Post (WNP) was a short-lived Belgian extreme right-wing organization founded in March 1981 by Paul Latinus and members of the Front de la Jeunesse (FJ). The organization ceased to exist after the Front de la Jeunesse disbanded in 1983 and Paul Latinus was found dead in his girlfriend's home in April 1984.

Contents

Pastorale murders

Marcel Barbier, a WNP member, was convicted in May 1987 for a gruesome double murder at a synagogue on the la rue de la Pastorale in Anderlecht on February 18, 1982. One of the victims, Alphonse Vandermeulen, had been married to Barbier's current girlfriend, Marcelle Gobert. The police interrogated Barbier and his girlfriend, and searched both their homes, but no arrests were made. The police investigation into the murders was without success until August 16, 1983, when a violent incident occurred at Barbier's home in Saint-Gilles. Barbier was arrested, and when the police searched his home they found confidential NATO material, various weapons and neo-Nazi material. It also turned out that Barbier was a former member of the Front de la Jeunesse, and was currently a member of a neo-Nazi organization called Chevalerie teutonique. Barbier was convicted and jailed for this violent incident, [1] but the investigation into the Pastorale murders continued.

During the interrogation of Barbier, the police found out about Westland New Post, although it was later revealed this organization was already known to the Belgian State Security Service, with an agent (albeit on his own initiative) already infiltrating the organization at the end of 1981, but the intelligence service did not communicate what it knew to the police or judiciary services. The police then investigated the WNP members to find out whether it was a private militia. Paul Latinus told the police that Barbier and another WNP member were behind the murders. Latinus had helped Barbier getting rid of the murder weapon and other relevant evidence. Barbier was the only person convicted for this murder, although other WNP members were suspect. In 1989, WNP member Christian Elnikoff claimed that he had committed the crime on Latinus' orders and that Marcel had made a false confession, also under Latinus' orders. [2]

NATO documents

During the investigation of the incident at Barbier's home, the police found confidential NATO documents. Barbier told the police they were not his, but the possession of another WNP member, Michel Libert. Michel Libert worked as a military volunteer at the NATO Transmission Centre in Evere. Latinus, leader of WNP, was interrogated multiple times by the police and would confess to the stealing of confidential NATO documents. Security at the Centre was not high, and Libert delivered the documents to Latinus, who later published some of the material in the two editions of the WNP Althing magazine, which was delivered to, among others, military personnel. Latinus told the police that this was on behalf of his 'American superiors', to wake up the military command at NATO that leaks were happening, with only material on the Soviet Union being published in the Althing. Later it turned out more WNP members worked at the NATO Transmission Centre, and would deliver material, via Libert, to Latinus.

Brabant killers

In October 2014, the Belgian police apprehended Michel Libert, the former no. 2 of the organization. He was interrogated as a suspect in the Brabant killers case and his house was searched. The Belgian public television station RTBF alleged that Westland New Post had performed reconnaissance actions on the stores that later would be attacked by the Brabant killers. [3] M. Libert had previously been interviewed several times as a witness. He left the court as a free man. The search of his house did not reveal anything that pointed to a possible connection with the Brabant Killers. [4]

WNP and the Belgian State Security Service

Westland New Post was infiltrated by an agent of the Belgian State Security Service, Christian Smets. Smets already knew Paul Latinus, and Latinus previously worked as informant about the "extreme left" for the State Security. He was also an agent for some American intelligence service. Latinus himself tried to become an agent of the State Security, successfully passing the first exam, but he flew to Chile in January 1981 when the magazine Pour published an article in which he was depicted as an "extreme-rightist" infiltrating "extreme left" organizations. Latinus returned to Belgium somewhat later, and founded WNP with Marcel Barbier and Michel Libert.

In the organizational structure of WNP, Christian Smets was responsible for operational details, and taught the members about surveillance and intelligence gathering. One exercise of Smets supposedly took place just before the Pastorale murders, where members of WNP were given the task to shadow what later turned out to be one of the murder victims. Smets himself in later parliamentary testimony denied this proposition by former WNP members, but admitted giving intelligence exercises.

The last contacts between Smets and WNP occurred in June 1982, when Smets was transferred to the sector Brussels of the Secret Services, becoming responsible for VIP protection. Latinus at this time would stop being an informant for State Security, but Michel Libert would continue his relationship. According to Libert, Smets wrote an article in the anti-communist Nouvel Europe Magazine in March 1983, on the topic of "State Security prepares an extreme-right coup d'état?" Shortly after the Barbier incident Libert's relations to State Security would be severed, and the responsible group of State Security would be put off the WNP case.

Latinus suicide

The Belgian police found the dead body of Paul Latinus in the evening of April 24, 1984, at the home of his girlfriend in Court-Saint-Étienne, after her notification. The police found him lying on the floor of a basement, with strangulation marks around his neck, but no other signs of violence or disorder. They found a telephone cord that was cut. The girlfriend explained to the police that she found him when she came home from a bar, and that she cut the line between Latinus' head and the ceiling.

The body would be removed for burial, but the next day a judge ordered a house search. The girlfriend was again interrogated, and told the police that Latinus had a file Pinon, that had information on certain 'partouzes' of high-placed functionaries, involving minors. She said she had burned the file, after having shown it to an acquaintance. An autopsy was made that same day on the body of Latinus. The acquaintance that might have more information on the case was later found to have moved to Spain, before the Latinus suicide, but he was not further interrogated.

During the investigation into the death of Latinus, several WNP members would find it hard to believe that Latinus committed suicide, because he never gave a hint in that direction and had no reason to commit such an act. They found it more plausible that it was in fact a camouflaged murder, because he had a lot of compromising information on other people. Forensic tests were carried out in the basement in the winter of 1985, to check against the weight of Latinus, to see if the cord was not supposed to snap. Nothing conclusive came from this though, and an analysis of a certain quick strangulation method was also not found to be in agreement with the marks on Latinus's neck. The investigative team found no reason to continue the investigation, and thus the case Latinus was closed in the autumn of 1986. The remains of Latinus were exhumed in 1998, when the investigative team of the Brabant Killers, the cell-Jumet, tried to find out if the DNA of Latinus could be brought into connection with the Brabant massacre, but no positive results were found.

See also

Related Research Articles

Marc Dutroux Belgian serial killer

Marc Paul Alain Dutroux is a Belgian convicted serial killer, rapist, and child molester.

DéFI Political party in Belgium

DéFI is a social-liberal, liberal, regionalist political party in Belgium mainly known for defending French-speakers’ interests in and near the Brussels region. The party is led by François de Smet, a member of the Chamber of Representatives. The party's current name, DéFI or Défi, was adopted in 2016 and is a backronym of Démocrate, Fédéraliste, Indépendant meaning "challenge" in French.

Brabant killers Belgian gang

The Brabant killers, also named the Nivelles Gang in Dutch-speaking media, and the mad killers of Brabant in French-speaking media, are responsible for a series of violent attacks that mainly occurred in the Belgian province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985. A total of 28 people died and 22 were injured. The actions of the gang, believed to consist of a core of three men, made it Belgium's most notorious unsolved crime spree. The active participants were known as The Giant ; the Killer and the Old Man. The identities and whereabouts of the "Brabant killers" are unknown. Although significant resources are still dedicated to the case, the most recent arrests are of the now-retired original senior detectives themselves.

Michel Paul Fourniret was a French serial killer who confessed to killing twelve people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. After he was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a girl in Ciney, Fourniret confessed to killing nine people—eight females and one male—in 2004, having been informed on by his then-wife, Monique Pierrette Olivier. Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders on 28 May 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, while Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years for complicity.

Communist Combatant Cells Belgian terrorist group

Cellules Communistes Combattantes was a Communist Belgian urban guerrilla organization.

The State Security Service (VSSE) is a Belgian intelligence and security agency. Established in 1830, it is the oldest intelligence service except for the Vatican's. The State Security is a civilian agency under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, while the military intelligence agency, the General Information and Security Service, operates under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. The current Administrator-General is Jaak Raes, after his predecessor Alain Winants occupied the position between 2006 and 2014. The VSSE takes part in a number of international intelligence cooperative relationships, such as the Club de Berne and the CTG. It has contacts with over 90 sister services across four continents.

Madani Bouhouche was a Belgian gendarme, and associate of the far right who was convicted of two murders, but strongly suspected of committing a third and attempting several more. He organised a small circle of like-minded men of police and even professional backgrounds into a self-sufficient gang that carried out at least one multimillion-dollar robbery, and the initial stage of a bizarre extortion plot that echoed a notorious and still-unsolved series of multiple robbery-homicides. A lifelong gun fanatic, he repeatedly retained and then was caught with illegal weapons that implicated him, with his final downfall coming when he shot dead the head of a family of diamond merchants that he and his partner apparently tried to rob. Although he always denied any involvement and passed a polygraph, Bouhouche became the subject of enduring suspicions about what he might have been able to reveal about mass shootings by the still unidentified Brabant killers.

The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called "Gladio", was a secret mixed civilian and military unit, trained to form a resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion and part of a network of similar organizations in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation states. It functioned from at least 1951 until 1990, when the Belgian branch was promptly and officially dissolved after its existence became publicly known following revelations concerning the Italian branch of the stay-behind network.

Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw was a Flemish neo-Nazi group, created in 2004 from a splinter of the Flemish branch of the international Nazi skinhead organization Blood & Honour.

Robert de Foy Belgian collaborator with Nazi Germany

Robert Herman Alfred de Foy was a Belgian magistrate, and head of the Belgian State Security Service, during the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis. This period of his life has led to considerable historical debate around de Foy's legacy, but in the post-war period he returned to his pre-war position, was decorated Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold II, and recognised as "Righteous Among the Nations" by the state of Israel.

Albert Raes was a Belgian magistrate and was head of the Belgian Security Services from 1977 until 1990.

The Geheime Feldpolizei, short: GFP, lit.'Secret Field Police', was the secret military police of the German Wehrmacht until the end of the Second World War (1945). Its units carried out plain-clothed security work in the field - such as counter-espionage, counter-sabotage, detection of treasonable activities, counter-propaganda, protecting military installations and the provision of assistance to the German Army in courts-martial investigations. GFP personnel, who were also classed as Abwehrpolizei, operated as an executive branch of German military intelligence, detecting resistance activity in Germany and in occupied France. They were also known to carry out torture and executions of prisoners.

National Archives of Belgium

The National Archives of Belgium is the main depository of the Belgian State Archives. It is located on rue de Ruysbroeck/Ruysbroeckstraat, next to the Mont des Arts, in central Brussels. This archive repository holds over 70 kilometres (43 mi) of archives.

Édouard Ducpétiaux Belgian journalist and social reformer

Antoine Édouard Ducpétiaux was a Belgian journalist and social reformer.

<i>Silent Action</i> 1975 film

Silent Action is a 1975 Italian poliziottesco film directed by Sergio Martino.

2016 Brussels bombings Islamic State suicide bombings in Belgium

The 2016 Brussels bombings was a coordinated terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, carried out by the Islamic State, on 22 March 2016. Three coordinated suicide bombings occurred: two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, and one at Maalbeek metro station on the Brussels metro. Thirty-two civilians and three perpetrators were killed, and more than 300 people were injured. Another bomb was found during a search of the airport. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

2018 Liège attack 29 May 2018 terrorist action in Liège, Belgium

On 29 May 2018, Benjamin Herman, a prisoner on temporary leave from prison, stabbed two female police officers, took their guns, shot and killed them and a civilian in Liège, Belgium. The gunman took a woman hostage before he was killed by police. The attacker had since 2017 been suspected of having been radicalised in prison after converting to Islam, and was reported to be part of the entourage of a prison Islamist recruiter. The method of the attack was said by investigators to match and be specifically encouraged by the Islamic State which claimed the attack. Prosecutors say they are treating the attacks as "terrorist murder". The attack is treated as "jihadist terrorism" by Europol.

Events in the year 1865 in Belgium.

The following lists events that happened during 1906 in the Kingdom of Belgium.

Leyniers family

The Leyniers family (/lɛnɪjɛ/) is a bourgeois family that appeared in Brussels in the 15th century and produced many high-level tapestry makers and dyers, experts in the art of dyeing in subtle shades the woolen threads destined for this trade.

References

  1. "En Belgique Un militant néo-nazi condamné à perpétuité pour le meurtre d'un couple". lemonde.fr.
  2. "CRIMES DE LA PASTORALE: UN VIEUX DU WNP AVOUE ET DISCULPE BARBIER..." lesoir.be.
  3. (in Dutch)Gazet Van Antwerpen/Belga (2014). "Gewezen lid extreemrechtse groepering ondervraagd over Bende van Nijvel (Former member extreme right group interrogated about Brabant Killers)".
  4. (in Dutch)Gazet Van Antwerpen/Belga (2014). "Ex-kopstuk Westland New Post vrijgelaten (Former leader Westland New Post released)".

Literature