It was a very bad mishap that happened, this Friday evening, to Jean-Claude Marcourt from Liège, president of the Parliament of Wallonia and municipal councilor in Liège (head of the PS group)… Two individuals seized his briefcase containing various valuables.
To achieve this, they used trickery… This happened while his driver was waiting for him, in his vehicle (BMW X5), place Xavier Neujean, in the center of Liège. At one point, two North African-looking individuals approached the vehicle. One advanced towards the driver and challenged him. The man then rolled down the window to answer her. Once the driver’s attention was diverted, a second individual took the opportunity to open the rear door of the vehicle where Jean-Claude Marcourt’s briefcase was. The man grabbed her and the two companions then left the scene.
In the briefcase were in particular a laptop, an iPad tablet, the keys to his home or the device to open his entrance gate.
Once the theft was detected, the police were immediately alerted. As well as the magistrate on duty at the Liège prosecutor’s office. Quite quickly, the briefcase in question could be geolocated using GPS chip technology.
This is how, as we learned from the prosecution, geolocation led the police to a district of Liège. The police first knocked on the door but no one came to open it when they heard voices… The prosecution specifies that the police then broke down the door in order to enter the interior of this accommodation. Three men were there. They immediately fled. According to the magistrate, one of them jumped out of the window to escape the police. Seriously injured, he was taken to hospital. At the time of writing these lines, his life was in danger.
The other two individuals were apprehended. They are illegally residing in Belgium. In the apartment, the police found some of the objects that were in Jean-Claude Marcourt’s briefcase as well as other objects that were probably stolen.
The prosecution transmitted the file to an investigating judge, demanding that these three individuals be placed under an arrest warrant.