A former Belgian soldier was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison for stabbing two police officers in what a court now says may have been an act of revenge rather than a terror attack.
Hicham Diop was arrested on October 5 last year after he assaulted two officers, one female and the other male, in an attack that came amid a series of terror incidents in Belgium, some of which targeted the police.
Diop, a 44-year-old kickboxer and ex-member of the armed forces, who also hurt two other officers before being shot in the leg and subdued, was initially charged with a terror-related offense.
However, the criminal court in Brussels ruled out terrorism, saying it gave Diop the benefit of the doubt as such a motive was “likely but uncertain.”
Diop had told investigators he was “a soldier of Daesh,” but the court said this was not supported by concrete evidence.
The remarks were more likely the result of his “tendency to mythomania” and his desire to “impress his audience,” the court said.
It judged credible his lawyer’s argument that it was an act of vengeance stemming from a 2011 incident when a police vehicle hit him.
It said he nursed a paranoid grudge in which he was the victim of a police plot and felt he was denied justice.
His lawyer Sebastien Courtoy told AFP he may appeal against the sentence, which he said was “slightly too high” and failed to take sufficient account of the road accident.
However, he was satisfied that the court had dropped the terrorism charge.
The federal prosecutor had called for a 15-year jail term for terrorism.
The two officers who were stabbed, one with wounds to the stomach and the other to the neck, were released from the hospital but have been on sick leave ever since.
Belgium remains on alert following the March 22, 2016, Daesh suicide bombings targeting the Brussels metro and airport in which 32 people were killed.

Source:Arabnews