Hunting the far-right anti-vaccine military in Belgium

An armed far-right soldier nicknamed the Belgian Rambo, 46, described as "dangerous" and under the anti-terrorist scrutiny, has become Belgium's public enemy number one, after he lost track last Tuesday in some woods. Jürgen Conings, veteran of several wars, shaved, muscular, with a body full of tattoos, and with a latent hatred against the strict measures imposed by the Government during the pandemic, disappeared after stealing weapons in a barracks and threatening death, among others, the star virologist of the country that hosts the European institutions.

The scientist, Marc van Ranst, 55, has been transferred with his family to a "safe house" protected by the police. The far-right was still unaccounted for this Saturday, but the track focuses on the Hoge Kempen national park, a lush reserve in eastern Belgium, in the Flemish region, just a step from the border with the Netherlands and Germany. The case has raised alarm about the threat posed by lone wolves linked to the rise of far-right ideology in Belgium and other European countries.

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This Friday, when the soldier had already been hidden in those forests for 72 hours, about 400 police and military personnel were combing an area of ​​some 12,000 hectares. "Everything is under control," says Jos Lantmeeters, the governor of the province of Limburg, next to one of the park entrances. The crisis cabinet command post has been set up at the campsite to hunt down Conings. The governor's words of calm contrast with the intense traffic of security forces and bodies that come and go on the roads in the area and have broken the peace of Maasmechelen, the town located on the edge of the reserve, where battleships circulate and trucks full of soldiers armed to the teeth, evoking scenes of war. The town's mosques, another possible target of the far-right, have also been protected by armed police. Reinforcements have even arrived from the Netherlands and Germany.

As the search continues, the Belgian press tries to figure out who exactly Jürgen Conings is and what he has failed to allow him to escape. He is a specialized sniper, a shooting teacher, recruited by the Armed Forces in 1992, with experience in missions in Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Flemish daily Het Laatste Nieuws, which will potentially allow him to survive. for weeks in the wild. Divorced. He father of two children. “An anti-vaccine”, defines a colleague at Dernière Heure.

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On Monday morning, Conings left his home and never returned. Sources quoted by the local press assure that he left a note in which he threatens to launch "an attack against the regime and against virologists" and assures that he will fight until the end. He committed a robbery of weapons in a barracks; he left his military decorations on the grave of his parents; Some media assure that he was discovered hanging around the house of the scientist Marc van Ranst. "The man's intentions, according to the initial investigation, seem to be potentially aggressive towards institutions or personalities," the Prosecutor's Office said in a statement. On Tuesday the police find his Audi Q5 near the natural park. Inside the vehicle were four anti-tank rocket launchers. "The individual is probably still in possession of a lighter weapon," adds the Prosecutor's Office. He vanishes into the woods, just like Sylvester Stallone did in Cornered, the first Rambo movie.

Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said Thursday that "the judicial investigation shows that this is not an impulsive act." “The man has been preparing for this act for days. He is someone who is on the terrorist list. He is very dangerous,” he continued about the case.

The threat posed by this individual has been raised to level 4, the maximum (although the country's remains at a medium level). The crisis has called into question the Belgian security and intelligence systems, which in theory had the individual under the radar; He was one of about 50 far-rightists followed by the Threat Analysis Coordination Office (OCAM), Belgium's intelligence body on terrorism, extremism and radicalization, which, although last year described the far-right terrorist threat as "limited ”, he did warn: “It is not inconceivable that a 'lone actor' could be manipulated by this ideology to commit an attack”. Another 30 active Belgian soldiers are on the state security lists for their far-right radicalism.

The crisis has hit the current coalition government, accused of myopia. Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder was subjected to intense questioning in Parliament on Thursday; she, a socialist, has launched an internal investigation, and has defended herself by pointing out the silence that the Vlaams Belang party, one of the most radical far-right political formations in Europe, has kept on the case, which she has accused of "blowing the embers ” that heat extremism. Meanwhile, the prime minister, the liberal Alexander de Croo, wondered "how someone active within the defense, who is on the Security lists as a person with extremist ideas and who has already made threats, had access to weapons and he has been able to wield them”.

He rings the phone and Van Ranst's deep voice answers the other end. He can't tell where he is. But he does know how he finds himself: "Bored to the core." Since the safe house he is in, the virologist has not lost his sense of humor. Known for a long time for his confrontational positions against the extreme right, the professor at the University of Leuven has become in this last year and a half marked by the coronavirus one of the most reputable scientific voices in the country. His defense of the strict confinement measures imposed to stop the pandemic has stirred up the hornet's nest of his enemies.

Van Ranst has needed police protection since last summer, when he began receiving death threats. But this time, in the crosshairs of a radical in possession of four rocket launchers, things have taken a darker turn. On the phone, he says he's not afraid, especially if he takes a look at the six armed police officers guarding his lair. But Van Ranst warns of the dangerous amalgamation that is generating the fusion between the extreme right and a movement that questions the veracity of the pandemic: “They are prone to having these fantasies. They believe every fake news story, every conspiracy theory." In the threats he receives by mail, social media, and phone, they routinely wish him death for "committing crimes against humanity," he explains. "The most moderate believe that a new Nuremberg tribunal would be necessary for all the virologists in the world."

The scientist points to the extreme right linked to the Flemish party Vlaams Belang, a formation that tripled its votes in the last elections (2019) becoming the second most supported force in the country, as responsible for fueling this growing spiral of hatred: "Some of its leaders are promoting it by being equally insulting and demeaning”, he denounces. "And that creates the right atmosphere for some to decide to go a step further and say, 'Yeah, let's say he should be killed.'

This same cocktail is spreading in different corners of the EU. In Germany, for example, the intelligence services have recently placed under surveillance a denialist movement called Querdenker (lateral thinking) that opposes vaccinations and lockdowns, and is linked to the extreme right. Van Ranst claims the need for "a much stronger scientific education" in schools to support rational thought from childhood. And he believes that right-wing extremists should no longer have a "free pass" to spread their messages.

While the search for Conings continues, a newborn group on Facebook created in support of the military (it is called "Like one behind Jürgen") already has more than 25,000 followers. Virologist Van Ranst has denounced its "hateful" content with "calls to violence" and called for its closure. The creator of the group, who claims not to be an extremist, focuses on the fable of a soldier who has fulfilled his duty to defend the country: “Jürgen fought for the same people who are now persecuting him. Does he not embarrass you?

Conings has also received the virtual embrace of Tomas Boutens, an influential person of the Flemish far right, former leader of the neo-Nazi gang Sangre, Tierra, Honor y Lealtad, also a war veteran, and convicted in 2014 of spreading violent ideology and preparing attacks. Boutens has expressed through Facebook his support for a "brother in arms" with whom he coincided in Afghanistan. "Wherever you are, you are not alone."

Support for Conings also reaches the streets where the vehicles of the soldiers who are hunting him circulate, showing that the ferment of something dangerous floats in the atmosphere of Belgium. "I don't want him to get caught," says a man with long hair, no mask, lip piercings, and tattoos peeking out from under a Yakuza-brand sweatshirt, often worn in far-right circles. He is a resident of the area and assures that he has met Conings at the gym on occasions; he has come to the area to take some selfies with his mobile. He is photographed next to the police vans that block access to the natural park. On the back of the sweatshirt, two pistols flank a Jesus Christ nailed to the cross.

Another neighbor, named Eric, a retired man with a cap from the New York Police Department, puts the spotlight on the post-traumatic stress that the military man may have suffered. "When you come back from the war, you need help," he says, evoking a possible cause of Conings' performance – "his mind went away" – and thus drawing a certain parallelism with the first Rambo film, a reflection on the abandonment suffered by the Vietnamese military returning home. Eric has known these fields since he was a child. Looking out into the woods, he speculates: “He's not here. It's impossible, he's already escaped." Although he also assures that an elite soldier could hold out hidden in it for weeks: there is water and animals.