BRUSSELS – Belgian authorities sought to deflect questions on Wednesday over the furlough of a convicted criminal, known to have been radicalised in jail, who killed three people in the Belgian city of Liege.

Just hours after his release, the man named by Belgian media as Benjamin Herman killed two policewomen and a bystander on Tuesday before being gunned down in what officials say was a terrorist attack. Police also suspect the 36-year-old of the murder of a former associate found dead at his home.

In and out of jail for a variety of crimes since 2003, Herman found a path to violence that has heightened concerns Europe’s prisons are incubators for radicalism.

He converted to Islam while in detention, a Belgian security source told Reuters, and was under suspicion of radicalisation.

In Belgium, a prisoner’s inclusion on a state security list as a suspected radical is not automatically communicated to all police or the prison service, experts say.

It was the fourteenth time since his detention that he was granted temporary leave, intended to help him prepare for eventual reintegration into society in 2020, Justice Minister Koen Geens told reporters.

READ: Three die in suspected terror shooting in Belgium

“Everyone in Belgium is asking the same question: how is it possible that someone convicted for such serious acts was allowed to leave prisons?” Belgium’s deputy prime minister Alexander de Croo was cited by local media as saying.

Herman stabbed the policewomen, aged 45 and 53, from behind at around 10.30am on a boulevard in the centre of Belgium’s third biggest city, seized their handguns and shot both.

He shot dead a 22-year-old trainee teacher who was sitting in a car before entering a high school about 100 metres away and taking two female employees hostage.

The gunman was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” — God is greatest in Arabic — when he burst from the school shooting at police, in a video shot by local residents.

Four police officers were wounded before the attacker was finally killed.

The national crisis centre, on high alert since past attacks by Islamic State in Paris and Brussels in the past three years, said it was monitoring events but had not raised its alert level, an indication follow-up attacks were not expected.

“I think it was just one individual that completely snapped and went on a killing spree,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a specialist on jihadism who has maintained contacts with Belgians fighting in Syria. “I don’t think it was an organised attack.”

Reuters