April 25th, 1984. A man is hanging by the neck from a light fitting in his cellar. Six months earlier he had complained about “death threats in the Pinon file” (De Morgan). From that point onwards rumours fly. It's said that the Pinon file is being used to blackmail politicians to ensure adherence to some unspecified agenda. Commissioner of the Brussels Judicial Police Marnette claims the rope is too short. The man is Paul Latinus, head of the Westland New Post. Formerly Section G of the Front de la Jeunesse, the WNP was made up entirely of members of the national Gendarmerie who wished to be kept separate from the rest of the Front and for their identities to be kept secret from their employer. Ultimately their employer was the Belgian military intelligence system, of which the Gladiators were SDRA8, the Gendarmes SDRA6.
Between 1982 and 1985 a series of senseless massacres were perpetrated in Belgium, mostly in the province of Brabant. In another link to the Pinon dossier this gang became known as the Gang of Nijvel. Rather than indulging in a bit of wanton murder as a side effect of their crime spree, their modus operandi was predicated solely upon causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible. They would go into a supermarket and kill people first, then grab a bit of loot quickly and disappear. In one case they robbed a shop and lay in wait for the police to arrive, ambushing them and killing a policeman. That being a gun shop they also made off with a handful of guns.
Twenty people were killed by the Gang of Nijvel. If it is to be accepted that the death of Latinus was a murder, as has been believed by many people, we can almost certainly add to that total.
One of the founding members of Group G of the Front de la Jeunesse, later the Westland New Post, was one Lekeu, Martial of the Gendarmerie. Suffering something like an attack of conscience he informed his superiors in the Gendarmerie of the existence of this fifth column of potential traitors in their midst. Talking about the Brabant massacres he says “So I told a gentleman that I met: 'Do you realise that members of the Gendarmerie of the Army are involved in that?' His answer was 'Shut up! You know, we know. Take care of your own business. Get out of here'. What they were saying was that democracy was going away [...] and they wanted more power.”
But was the WNP directly linked to the intelligence services? Were they Gladiators or just thugs?
Michel Libert may supply the answer. On trial for the theft of secret military and NATO telexes for the WNP he claimed “We only followed the wishes of authority.” One way or another he and his co-conspirators evaded conviction, being acquited by the highest military court in Belgium. Libert claimed that the fittest members of the WNP formed an “action branch” tasked with secret missions ordered directly by Latinus. “From 1982 to 1985”, he says, he was told “You, M Libert, know nothing about why we're doing this. Nothing at all. All we ask is that your group, with cover from the Gendarmerie, with cover from Security, carry out a job. Target: the supermarkets. Where are they? What kinds of locks are there? What sort of protection do they have that could interfere with our operation. Does the store manager lock up? Or do they use and outside security company?“ Some people have thought the WNP carried out these attacks on their own. If so, it would have been this group killing, not merely reconnoitring.
Libert says: “We carried out the orders and sent in our reports. Hours of opening and closing. Everything you want to know about a supermarket. What was this for? This was one amongst hundreds of missions. Something that had to be done. But the use it was all put to, that is the big question”.
The killing were carried out with stolen Gendarmerie weapons. The stolen goods, including sums of untraceable cash were often found dumped not far from the crime scene. Terrorism in its purest form.
Libert took his orders from Latinus. Latinus, according to his own story, was paid by the US DIA. He was an informer for both the DIA and the Belgian Surete, a nuclear science technician and an adviser to various government bodies. He was revealed by Pour, the magazine that covered the Pinon affair, to the public as a right winger and fled to Pinochet's Chile. He was soon back in Belgium, recruited by the Surete to provide intelligence on left wing movements. He arrived back just in time for the Brabant killings.
According to Garot, editor of Pour, “Latinus had been implanted into Front de la Jeunesse with a specific task.”
At that time General Beaurir was head of the Gendarmerie, another from the Pinon file.
December 16th 1983, a late night petrol station. A businessman and his mistress in a Mercedes saloon. They're returning from Paris. Both have been unfortunate in business but they've somehow acquired the money for a big chunk of the Ardennes which they've just bought.
A few moments later they, and an unlucky policeman, lie dead, three more victims of the Brabant massacres. The Mercedes is later found dumped by the killers with their pitiful loot in the boot, a few chocolates, some coffee and some cans of oil.
The mysterious influx of cash to the two was rumoured to be from de Pouw, one of the orgiasts in the Pinon case and a developer associate of vanden Boeynants. A payment of blackmail, as the pair had claimed just before their death-trip to possess tapes of this man in an orgy with children. Not publicity his company would benefit from.
The woman, Elise Dewit, worked for an associate of vanden Boeynants, and again Depretre appears as investigator. Finne, van Camp, Chabab and other orgiasts were also amongst the "random" victims of the Killers, and Dewit was known to be an orgiast.
The Independent on Sunday 24/1/1990: “It is now believed that the Brabant killings were part of a conspiracy to destabilise Belgium's democratic regime, possibly to pave the way for a coup d'etat.”
In this aim they were helped by the US Marines. In 1984 a squad of marines with special training in Eastern European languages was despatched to parachute into Belgium. Their mission: to attack a Belgian police station, causing the Belgian police to become more vigilant and the population to believe in the imminence of a Red revolution. They were met by a local bank manager, a Gladiator, who was their guide. They lived off the land for two weeks, evading the population. They stormed a police station, killed the cop manning the place. They stole the guns in the armoury, giving them to local extremist groups.
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