He ended his days in the middle of a forest in northern Flanders with a gunshot, alone and hunted down like the John Rambo from the first film in the series with Sylvester Stallone, 46-year-old Belgian soldier Jurgen Conings with ideas of the extreme right.
The man had stolen military weapons and had therefore lost track of him on 17 May with the declared intention of wanting to carry out attacks against the political and health authorities of his country, guilty, according to him, of having given credit to the "conspiracy" on Covid-19 and proposing itself as an armed wing of denial revenge.
Tall, muscular and tattooed, shaved head, veteran of missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo, the 'Belgian Rambo' - as the local press has labeled Conings - had converted to radical right-wing, xenophobic and racist ideas, as well as coronavirus deniers and was considered very dangerous and branded as a potential terrorist by Belgian intelligence. Subject to some sanctions in the military ranks for his violent outbursts on Facebook, Conings served as a military trainer for candidates for overseas missions. Arousing the indignation of the holder of the Belgian defense, Ludivine Dedonder: "It is reprehensible that certain soldiers or former soldiers have shown him support", doing so "damaging the reputation and honor of the 25.000 women and men who make up our defense ", the minister thundered at the end of May.
Conings had stolen weapons from the barracks where he worked and then went into hiding, issuing a series of online threats, one in particular against virologist Marc Van Ranst, one of the most listened to experts in the fight against the pandemic in Belgium. The next day, when the manhunt had already begun to prevent him from striking, his SUV was found abandoned along a road in the woods with four anti-tank rocket launchers and copious ammunition on board. It was believed that he still had some small arms with him and that he was hiding, taking advantage of his survival skills acquired in the army.
The body was found today by a hiker on a mountain bike, suspicious of the smell. It soon became clear that it could have been the fugitive. The first medical findings confirmed this, also stating - pending the autopsy - that the man shot himself, putting an end to five weeks of fear and social alarm. (HANDLE).