Police Searching for a Fugitive Far-Right Soldier Say They’ve Found a Body

Johan Tollenaere, the mayor of Maaseik, Belgium, was mountain biking in a difficult to reach section of Hoge Kempen National Park on Sunday morning when a foul odour alerted him to a decomposing body. Belgian authorities believe the body is Jurgen Conings, 43, the soldier who disappeared into the park on the 18th of May after stealing automatic weapons and threatening top Belgian officials. 

According to local media reports, Tollenaere alerted police to the body near Dilserbos in eastern Belgium and forensic teams were searching the area, which at least 500 soldiers from the elite counter terrorism units of four countries had repeatedly searched since Conings’ initial disappearance after abandoning his boobytrapped car outside the park.

“We believe it is Conings based on items recovered from the scene but the DNA tests will need to confirm this,” said a Belgian police official via messenger on the condition of anonymity. Conings had stolen two unique 5.7mm firearms from a Belgian Army facility where he worked as a shooting instructor, and while the source refused to specifically confirm both firearms were recovered, Belgian media reports suggest that is the case.

An experienced soldier with deployments to Iraq, Mali and Kosovo and extensive special forces training, Conings was demoted from his position as a firearms instructor in January, after Belgian Military Intelligence raised concerns about his associations with as many as 30 other soldiers with links to extreme far-right groups. Shortly before his disappearance, and apparent suicide in the park, Conings threatened top Belgian COVID officials over social distancing and mask restrictions and on the 17th of May was observed staking out the home of one official for more than two hours.

Marc Van Ranst, Belgium’s best known virologist who was threatened by Conings in the past, wrote on Twitter to say his thoughts were with Conings’ family.

Conings’ disappearance caused an international manhunt with counter terrorism units from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg joining hundreds of other police and military personnel to repeatedly search the 100 square km park over the last month, including with a team of specially trained cadaver dogs just last week.

The manhunt gripped Belgium for a month as impromptu support groups decrying the government’s hunt for Conings began to protest in small numbers, and thousands of supporters took to the Telegram app to trade conspiracy theories.