This is how the Antwerp city council went: a new building code and Gantman calls PVDA and Groen “the importers of the Gaza conflict” (Antwerp)

The torture of a cellmate in Begijnenstraat has not left the majority and opposition unmoved. Koen Laenens of N-VA also refers to the overcrowding in prisons and says that 1,000 new drug offenders are locked up every year in Begijnenstraat and Antwerp. “The city continues to fight the War on Drugs with full commitment.”

Following the recent events in the prison, he asks Mayor De Wever about the status of the detention house where Digipolis is now located on Kiel and about the status of the detention center that has already been staged by Theo Francken, among others.

Peter Mertens (PVDA) says that everything “in that building of the years” is aimed at the 440 people for whom that building was actually intended. “While one goes to the toilet, the other is eating at the table. A dog in a kennel has more space. The guards told me, and I also mentioned it in the previous municipal council, that things would end badly at some point.” “Every institution can say that there is a ceiling. The doctor? A patient stop. A hospital? Maximum number of beds, but for prisons we just add more people. What is your view on all of this, Mayor?”

Bart De Wever took a moment to say that “what happened in Begijnenstraat is shameful. Everyone should be deeply ashamed about this.” He further refers to his appointment as mayor where he asked then alderman Rob Van de Velde what the state of affairs was with regard to a new detention center. “I took that up and now the first stone has been laid. About the same number of people, but the difference is that no one can join.”

In addition, the mayor also criticizes the “years of disinvestment” of the Ministry of Justice in the detention center on Begijnenstraat. “If you want to carry out short sentences, but do not have the capacity for it, that is untenable. That new detention center must be built, but unfortunately the one in Begijnenstraat will also remain open longer than we wish. Minimal security investments must simply be made.”

“We think a detention center for short-term prisoners is a good idea, we jumped on it. We provide a place and the right to build a building to say: start with it. But there too… the train of slowness. Short-term prisoners could have been put there instead of in a detention center where they are crossed with ‘other types’. Anyway. We have done everything we can to the detention center, the new detention center too, a closed center for illegal immigrants too. We are doing everything we can to contribute and I I hope to see the day when this is behind us.”