A man who shot dead two police officers and a bystander in Liège on Tuesday killed another person the day before the attack, the Belgian interior minister has said.
Jan Jambon told the broadcaster RTL on Wednesday that the gunman, identified as Benjamin Herman, "also committed a murder the night before". The minister confirmed the male victim of the first attack was a former prisoner who had done time with Herman.
Herman is alleged to have killed him on Monday evening by hitting him over the head with a blunt object.
Herman (31) was killed in a shootout with police on Tuesday after stabbing two female police officers, taking their handguns and shooting them. He also shot dead a man sitting in a nearby car.
Witnesses said the attacker in Liège was dressed in black and carrying a rucksack. Footage aired by the broadcaster RTBF showed him shouting “Allahu Akbar” – God is greatest, in Arabic – as he walked through the city.
Wenke Roggen, a Belgian federal magistrate, said he shouted the phrase several times during the shootings.
Ms Roggen said the attack was being treated as terrorism due to the way Herman acted, which she said resembled Islamic State calls via video to attack police with knives and steal their weapons, plus his cry of “Allahu Akbar” and the fact he was in contact with radicalised people.
The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, said Herman had been indirectly mentioned in state security reports on radicalisation, but was not on a watchlist. "Different services considered that, based on the elements they had, there was no reason to give him such a qualification," he said.
Mr Michel described the attacks as “cowardly and blind violence”. He tweeted: “All our support for the victims and their loved ones. We are following the situation with the security services and the crisis centre.”
Herman, who was serving a 17-year sentence in Marche-en-Famenne prison for drug and theft convictions, was given 36 hours' leave on Monday evening to stay with his grandmother.
Since being imprisoned in 2003, he had completed 11 one-day release permits and 13 two-day periods of leave without problems. Investigators are examining whether he could have been radicalised in jail.
The justice minister, Koen Geens, said the attacker was a repeat offender who had been due for release in two years' time. "At the moment there is very little consistent we can say about [radicalisation]," he said. "In any case, he is not a clear-cut case – on the contrary. He certainly was not someone who could clearly be qualified as radicalised. Otherwise he would have been known as such by all services." – Guardian