He was a pioneer. The first commissioner Alain Grignard, who had followed all the changes in terrorism since 1985 and had retired at the end of 2019, died on Wednesday. Pedagogue, Alain Grignard continued to teach at the University of Liège where he was a lecturer.
Alain Grignard had joined the anti-terrorism within the former gendarmerie in 1985. We did not yet know of Islamist terrorism. At the time, the concern was the far left and the CCCs (Combatant Communist Cells). He followed the whole evolution of terrorism: from the firstnickel-plated legs” to suicide bombers in Brussels.
Thirty-five years later, the first Commissioner, reached the age limit, had bowed out. He had returned his badge in December 2019. But the one the Wall Street Journal had called after September 11, 2001 “secret weapon” of Belgium against terrorism, had not entirely dropped out. He continued his academic career at ULg.
As a child, he said, I wanted to be an archaeologist. It will first be the army, in the para-commando regiment. Then the gendarmerie, with the intention of joining the ESI, ancestor of the Special Units. He started in Liège, quickly joined the BSR, the judicial center of the gendarmerie. This speed is explained because, as a trainee, he had been able to distinguish himself during the arrest of big robbers.
“The current violence is, in my eyes, more worrying than the Islamist danger”
It was 1985, at the end of the CCCs. M. Grignard wore a beard. This was not done at the gendarmerie. He was called Serpico (from the name of a bearded policeman played by Al Pacino, in the eponymous 1973 film). He works on the CCC investigative suites, whose members have been arrested.
The first contacts with the Arab-Muslim world date from then. In 1985, there were attacks linked to Iranian networks in France. In Brussels, these networks around Hezbollah are buzzing. They want a center in St-Gilles. Mayor Charles Picqué smells the danger. The center does not open. These are Mr. Grignard’s first contacts with politics.
Police and academic
He goes into the field, especially in mosques, with his little quarrels. He is taking Arabic lessons. In 1987, relations between the Belgian and Moroccan gendarmerie were good. He left for 4 months in Morocco, in the Moroccan gendarmerie. This immersion teaches him how this Arab-Muslim world works. On his return, he persevered, obtained diplomas at the ULB where he became a scientific collaborator. He became an Arabist.
But he is also an accomplished sportsman, a great mountaineer who conquers summits. Or who sinks into the bowels of the earth, especially when he carried out missions for the DVI (Disaster Victims Identification), the federal police unit which intervenes to identify the victims of disasters or crimes. In this capacity, he had participated in missions in the former Yugoslavia to verify, on behalf of the International Criminal Court, whether mine shafts did not conceal mass graves.
“The man who speaks Arabic”
At the gendarmerie, he is “the man who speaks arabic”. And he is on all Islamist terrorism files: Zaoui, Mellouk, Trabelsi, GICM. He will be one of the few Belgians to go to Guantanamo to question the two Belgians who are imprisoned there.
The rest, everyone knows. These are the first departures in Syria. Alain Grignard lived on the front line of the interventions of the anti-terrorist services, whether on January 15, 2015 for the Verviers cell or for the attacks of March 22, 2016 when he went to the airport.
After the attacks, his unit, the DR3, the anti-terrorist unit of the PFF in Brussels, will be on fire from criticism. He tirelessly defended his young colleagues who, at the height of the investigations, slept at night on straw mattresses in their offices.
