Inside the home of crazed Belgian killer who launched grenade attack on Christmas market

[Euromutt]

35. Follow-up: "Police were instructed to leave perpetrator of bloodbath alone"

The Dutch Volkskrant reprints a story from Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws.

After being convicted on weapons charges in 2008, and being sentenced to 58 months in prison and an €11,000 fine, Amrani was released in October 2010 on parole. Conditions of his parole included avoiding using drugs and alcohol, not looking up old friends, having a source of income and a fixed abode. A "justice assistant" (parole officer) assigned to monitor him focused only on the last two. Because no explicit authorization was given, the parole officer could not monitor whether Amrani was trying to possess drugs or weapons. The police for their part failed to keep tabs on Amrani because of a guideline instructing police not to monitor parolees unless a complaint is filed against them.

Which is how he was able to set up an indoor cannabis plantation and again acquire a load of weapons.

Evidently, the Belgian criminal justice system failed to learn the lessons it should have drawn from the [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux|Dutroux affair]. I'm all for leaving a convict alone when he's completed his sentence and notionally "paid his debt to society," but when you're out on parole, that debt is not yet paid off. Moreover, this guy had a sufficiently long prior record that you could fairly call him a "career criminal" and you have to seriously wonder who thought it was a good idea to let him out on parole in the first place instead of keeping him in for his full sentence.