Eight people have been arrested by Belgian authorities following an investigation into serious threats made against Brussels prosecutor Julien Moinil. In July, the threat level against the prosecutor was raised to the highest level. According to Belgian authorities, “the suspects are believed to be active in the Albanian criminal network.”
Early Tuesday morning, 18 house searches were carried out in Brussels and Leuven. The arrested are being questioned and the court will decide later whether they will be detained or not.
In July , the police received information about a plot to attack Moinil. The information seemed serious, so concrete measures were taken to protect him.
Rumors had previously circulated that the threats originated from drug trafficking circles. Combating this phenomenon is one of Moinil's priorities, and he has significantly increased the pressure in recent months.
Moinil himself has not commented at the moment. This is not the first time in his career that he has been threatened and put under protection. Before his work as a prosecutor in Brussels, he worked for the federal prosecutor's office in the fight against organized crime. Even then, he was put under protection at least 2 times.
The first was a large-scale car fraud case. The gang behind the fraud allegedly wanted revenge and hired a hitman.
A year later, the same thing happened in connection with the “big Encro case”. It was Moinil’s persistence that led to the dismantling of the encrypted EncroChat application where drug traffickers talked. He managed to bring to justice a network of over 100 people who were trafficking drugs from Latin America to Europe. Among those arrested were many Albanians.
According to the Belgian newspaper “Le Soir”, at that time there were plans within Albanian circles to kill the prosecutor and it is said that a contract of 1 million euros was signed. In February he was asked about this issue by journalists, but said that he “does his job to protect people” and that he “accepts the consequences”.