Brussels Three Molenbeekse traders go in the new year without a shop. Looters destroyed a shop and a pharmacy. A fire destroyed a new furniture store that is almost renovated. The residents of the neighborhood complain: “Everyone knows who did it, but keep silent out of fear.”
Shortly after midnight get a piece or thirty young people from a café in the Ribaucourtstraat. They’re throwing hits and sticking flares. One arrow came according to a witness in a parked handling sessions.
Ibrahim Sogutlu sat in his apartment above the autobandenhandel when he got a hard bang heard. “I looked outside and saw high flames on the street,” he says. “With the fire extinguisher, I am down ran. When I was a second bang was heard, I gave up on it. I took the kids and my wife out of the house before the fire would skip.”
