Episode 39 – Verviers Terrorist Raid – Belgian Group Diane

Jon Becker: This episode of the debrief is dedicated to the memory of Jonathan Savelle, also known as Jav. Jav was a member of DSU, murdered on March 19th while executing a warrant on a gang suspected of narcotics and arms trafficking.

Jav and two other operators were ambushed by a suspect hiding behind a door, killing Jav and wounding two of his teammates. Freedom and security are never free. They're paid for in blood by men like Jav and his DSU brothers. Our thoughts are with Javs family and friends as they recover from this terrible tragedy.

My name is John Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

My guest today is Lionel D. Lio. Lio is a retired team leader who spent 15 years with the Belgian national police directorate of special Units, or DSU, also known as Group Diane. I'm excited to have Lio on the debrief because his former unit is a fantastic team. Were constantly on the front lines for European counterterrorism.

The operation we will be discussing today was a proactive warrant service against a jihadist terrorist cell located in a small town of Vervier, Belgium, that resulted in an extended gunfight and two suspects down. This raid was intended to and did prevent an imminent large-scale attack in Belgium with a terrorist cell that would later go on to commit the bombings in Brussels and Paris.

As is usually the case on The Debrief, we will discuss the responders and when appropriate, use their names and units because they are heroes and they need to be remembered. We will not be using the suspects names or identifying their specific groups because they are criminals and terrorists and need to be forgotten.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Lio!

Lio, thanks so much for being here today with me! I appreciate you taking the time!

Lionel D. Lio: Thank you, Jon! Thank you! I appreciate it!

Jon Becker: So, for the uninformed among us, maybe we should start with a little bit about the unit.

Lionel D. Lio: Yes. So the unit was created, established around 1972, like other european units. After the attacks in Munich, the JG in France was created the GES Genoin in Germany, and in the Belgium, the group Dien was created into the gendarmerie. 50 years ago, the belgian police landscape was the gendarmerie what's now the federal police and the local police. So there were two, almost two units on different levels, one for all the country and one the local police, more specifically for just local, local stuff.

Jon Becker: The way we would see FBI and a local police department.

Lionel D. Lio: Exactly, exactly. So it was created in 1972 as an anti terror unit initially, but of course, through the years it evolved through other tasks. The name state group Dian until 1980, and then it changed to special intervention Squad until 2000, and then it changed again to the acronym DSU, like you said, directorate special units.

So that's the big family. Approximately 600 colleagues. Divided. DSU is divided under different units, like an observation platoon, technical platoon, logistics, commando, of course. And the intervention unit. The intervention unit kept the name special Intervention Squad till almost two years ago and then backed up to Grupdian because the symbol of the dayana, it's the greek goddess of the hunting. So we kept the name and the symbol for the badging, etcetera, etcetera.

Jon Becker: The symbol is a stag, if I remember correctly. Right, because that was Diana's quarry, was a stag.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. It's the Dayan with a deer, holding a deer and just taking an arrow to hunt. That's a symbol. We are, or they are, because I've left six years ago now. The intervention unit comes approximately. It's not really a secret, but I think 50, 60 persons, something like that. Operational, maybe less, maybe more, something like that. It's not really important.

The importance is, of course, the skills and the accuracy of the group in DSU and Directorate special units. And this is, like I said, 606 hundred colleagues. So that's a little bit to give you a perspective of the unit nowadays. Of course, it was a big evolution between 1972 and now. I think in the seventies they were 30 ish something, and then there was an observation platoon created and in the eighties a technical platoon, and it evolved to now the big family of 600 colleagues.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think a kind of us equivalent would be the FBI hostage rescue team. Right? Full time counterterrorism team. Land and sea capability, air capability.

Lionel D. Lio: Yes, exactly. So we have the duty and the ownership over, so federal for all Belgium. Now, Belgium is only 10 million people. It's a small country. I don't know, maybe you can. Yeah, it's….

Jon Becker: LA Yeah. It's the greater Los Angeles area.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, yeah. In size and inhabitants, it's approximately LA, I think.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lionel D. Lio: And we are operating over all the country. So of course, La also. It's a. It's small and it's big. Twice when you go from left to right, or from north to south. You're driving 3 hours to go from north, from left to the right of the country. So it's far and it's not far. It's a little bit in between. It's not always operationally easy to go quick and fast to one point when you have a no stage situation or a barricaded or something.

So the core business initially, like I said, was anti terror, but of course, and we were spared of some terror until beginning 2000 and then 2015. So our core business was more barricaded situations, hostage rescues, house search, house rats, arrest of dangerous fugitives, jail riots. When the normal police can't handle it anymore, we are intervening in jail riots. We do also ransom deposits, etcetera, etcetera. So the very specific, accurate skills needed operations, that's what we do. We are named Ultima Racio. So when the other colleagues, police officers, police units, can't handle it anymore, we are there to solve it. There is nobody afterwards.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you guys are. Dion is the ultimate solution for the country of Belgium. And I think it's important to put Belgium in context. Right? It's a small country, but it's very centrally located. When you look at the terrorist attacks, and we're going to talk about one of those cells, Belgium is a popular staging ground. So although it is a small country, it has a disproportionate effect on world counterterrorism.

Lionel D. Lio: Yes, absolutely. Neither more Belgium. Brussels is taking the NATO as hub. In the center of Brussels. You have the NATO conference, you have also the European parliament, in the European Commission in Brussels.

So there are several important institutions in Belgium, in Brussels. And that's, of course, a magnetic pole for terrorist attacks and terrorist logistics, etc. Etc. A little bit like France. Like France. France, of course, is a much bigger country, but we have also that, that part of the history when in the fifties, sixties, seventies, there was more over of some migration of the southern countries, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's a very eclectic place, very nice, but also very explosive. Sometimes that's a little bit the problem. I don't know if you remember when Donald Trump was president and there were the attacks in Brussels. He said, yeah, once I went to Brussels and it was the h*** hole. And it stayed a little bit, as a quote, as a one liner in every Belgian's head, because Trump said it's a hellhole. H*** hole. We joked about it, but Trump is Trump.

Jon Becker: But just for the record, Lio, if Belgium is a hellhole, specifically, Brussels is a hellhole. I don't know what the rest of the world is, because Brussels is f****** beautiful.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like, it's a fantastic country and it's a beautiful city. So, yeah, I would call that a misnomer.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, no, no problem with that. But sometimes when, when you look at it in other perspectives, then you think, yeah, maybe he had a little bit. He was a little bit right on that side. Of course, it's a perfect place. It's a very nice city, very nice place. But like, everywhere, there are some neighborhoods and some communities that are really trespassing the law. And it became, and nowadays even more. Ten years ago, it was terrorism.

And nowadays, even when we speak now, today, there were attacks, but more correlated with drugs, really, drugs trafficking. In the north of Brussels, you have Antwerp, also famous city with a big port, and it's an entry for Europe for the cocaine transportation, et cetera. And it's really, since one or two years, it's really, really, really a problem with cartel. A little bit like in Mexico, with cartels in Antwerp, also in the Netherlands, in Brussels, they're shooting each other. I think that the four past days, since Sunday, we are Thursday now, since Sunday, there were four consecutive shootings in the center of Brussels between gangs, for us, but really with shotgun and rifles. It's really beginning to be really crazy.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, I mean, it makes sense that you have a full time tactical unit again. Although it's a small country, centrally located, and for purposes of this, counterterrorism becomes a real mission. Why don't we talk about your background, Lio? When did you join? How long were you on the force? How long were you on the team?

Lionel D. Lio: So I entered police academy in 2000 for one year. Then I was a police officer, just young guy, rookie, patrolling in the streets of Brussels for almost eleven months, twelve months. And then I had the opportunity to go from the local police. So from police officer patrolling police officer to the federal police, which, of course, tests and exams and whatever. It's not the purpose now to discuss this, but we were in my year in 2002, when I presented the exams, we were 240 candidates. And after all the course and the exams, and one year and a half later, we ended with seven.

So just giving you just a little bit, an insight of the selection and the selection course and the filtering, and it's one of the biggest, how do you say it? One of the biggest promotions ever. There is one promotion a year and it's one of the biggest.

Normally, I think this year there was only one coming out. Two years ago, it was three. So it's really. Of course, we are a small country with not that much candidates. I think each year there are between 100 and 150 candidates, and there are two or three that are coming out. Just to finalize this discussion. Since 19, the creation of the unit, we have a course number. I don't know how you call it in English.

Jon Becker: Like an operator number.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, an operating number. And since then, I resulted in 2003 if number 115.

Jon Becker: So since 1972, there have only been 100. From. From 72 to 2003, there had only been 115 men that had rotated through Deon.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. And now I think they are hundreds at 100, 6170, something like that, 20 years later. So to give you a little bit of perspective of the numbers of guys entering and going out again.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, it's not uncommon for you guys to get into the unit like you did get into the unit early in your career and spend the rest of your career. Yes, in the unit.

Lionel D. Lio: Absolutely. Yeah. Some guys stay all their career in the unit, so maybe not really operational anymore. When they are 40 ish, 45 ish, they stop being operational, but afterwards they're on duty for other things.

Jon Becker: So you get to the unit in 2003, you said.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, 2003. Then I was engaged as an. First as a rookie assaulter, and after two years, I specialized as a breacher. So explosive devices, etc, etcetera, during almost nine years, until 2011. And in 2011, I went back to the police academy to become a team leader. And then I stayed. I came back to the unit and was a team leader between 2011 and 2017.

Jon Becker: When you retired in 2017.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. It was. I quit because I had. I received another opportunity. It was, in my eyes, in my perspective, it was. It was. I was. I was tired in my head. We had two years of – In very, very, very intensive work, day and night, and I received another opportunity outside of the police, and I quit.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Lionel D. Lio: Not with – I quit it with a loaded heart. I don't know if you understand that, because it was. Of course, it's a brotherhood. It was my life during more than 15 years. But, yeah, I took that opportunity, and that's it.

Jon Becker: All right, well, why don't we. Let's set up this debrief. So just for context. 2015, 2016, we have this event. We have the Paris attacks. We have the bombings in Brussels. This is a period of time that is a terrorist powder keg. In Belgium and France, they're recurring large scale events and cells that are planning big operations. How did you guys first get involved in this operation?

Lionel D. Lio: Well, in fact, you have to look back probably a little bit further in the time because we are always focusing on 2015 1617. And that's accurate, of course, because that's when everything happens, really. But before, you have to know that between 2000, I'm gonna say 20, 1011 and 2014, we saw in Belgium and moreover in Brussels, but also in France, in both countries, that young guys were going to the Middle east, first to Iraq, but also to Syria and to Afghanistan to go and fight there for their religion.

And of course they went there and some of them came back. So they called them retronis. So they go and they come back retronis. And there was, I'm gonna say, some navigation between Europe and the Middle East during three, four, five years of young guys.

And when I say young guys, sometimes really young guys, guys, boys of 14, 15 years old going to there to fight and to come back, of course, after a few years, when they, the guys that survived there and were coming back to Europe, yeah, they were brainwashed, of course, at all front, all type, but also they were lost. They knew the really horrible scenes, horrible war scenes, and they came back in a normal life.

And there were, I think we can say that they were f***** up in their heads. So the guys, the boys or the men, because who weren't boys anymore, the men that stayed in Europe and moreover in Brussels and Paris, they planned to do some terrorist attacks in here, in our countries. And that was the beginning of the, of the, of the terror attacks in 2020, 14, 15 and 16. Because most of these guys were not all, but most of these guys were already went to the Middle East to fight.

So there were really fighters. They were, they knew how to fight. And like you said, first of all, there was also, there were some preliminance, some factors. There was an attack in a jewish museum in Brussels in 2014. I think there was also, I don't know, on the timeline, but I think it's also in 2014, there was the attack on the, on the tallis, on the train. And there is also a movie of Clint Eastwood about that where two American guys jump on the terrorists in the train, where he wants to execute the people in the train.

Jon Becker: I remember that. Yeah. It was a couple of Americans, soldiers or marines, if I remember correctly. Right?

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heroes. Heroes. So they were, they were traveling to, through Europe between Italy, France, Belgium and Netherlands. And they took the Tallis. So the Tallis is a train between Amsterdam, Paris, the south of France. It's a high velocity train. And yeah, there was rattorny, a guy that came back from Syria. He was brainwashed and he was ordered to do an attack on European soil. And he decided to go with the Kalashnikov with a Kalashnikov rifle in the training, the high velocity train, and to shoot the people.

But he had, what do you call it? He couldn't shoot with Kalashnikov. The two american guys, the two veterans or the two marines, I don't know, jumped on it. They fought with him. And eventually, and we were lucky, I think everybody was lucky that these two guys, these two heroes were on the train, because otherwise, I think we had the first attack in Europe that would have been the first, but we were rescued through Americans again on european soil, and then afterwards, end 2014. That's my point.

All the guys that were, for several months and some of them for several years in the Middle East, they came back to Europe, and more and more of these guys came back to Europe, and they planned something here. So we are an intervention unit. We have little contact with investigators, with federal prosecutor, of course, with detectives, etcetera. We are a unit that works not completely, but more over a little bit in the shadow apart of the other units.

So we don't always have much info coming. But we felt that there was something going on also in the unit, in the. Our observation platoon was working day and night, 24/7 on spotting and following observation, doing observations on guys that were coming back from the Middle East. And we felt that there was something coming up, but nobody could say it will be him doing that. So it was a little bit a foggy file.

Jon Becker: You have a bunch of unemployed military aged males who have gone and seen combat in Syria and Iraq, are trained, have fought, and are now embedding all over Belgium and France, presumably just to get on with their lives. But we know that that's not the case in this case. And so the game becomes almost whack a mole, right, where you're trying to figure out which one of these guys is going to move first, and, you know, and who's, who's trying to get a job and get on with their life, and who's not. It's a. That's a terrifying proposition.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. And who is not too much influenced by his friends, by his neighborhoods, by his religion, by his church or whatever predicament, etc. Etcetera. That. That's always the trigger. And 2014, I'm just giving you. This is a disclaimer, because I don't have, really, the details of every file and every timeline, so don't shoot on me if it's not 100% correct. But in 2014, there was a big file coming in through the Belgium secret services. It was an I and foreign intel, I think, from you guys, from the Americans, but also from the Israelis.

And they said, yeah, we have a sort of a group coming back from the Middle east. These are the guys. They are located there now. It's on you. France and Germany and Belgium. You have to do what you have to do with these guys. Follow them. So it was a bunch for Belgium of almost 40 returnees spread over all Belgium.

And our observation platoon was following these guys during months and months and months between, I think, September, October and end of December. And we were, during the Christmas and new year, we were standby because everybody thought, and also the federal prosecutor and also the minister thought, okay, it's gonna explode here. There will be amoks. There will be a terrorist attack in Brussels or somewhere else. You have to be standby and in a short nut shortcut. Nothing happens. Nothing happened during the end of 2014. But we felt that there was something upcoming.

And one week later, I think it was the 8th January 2015, I don't know if you remember, there were the first Paris attacks. So on Charlie Hebdo, there was a bloody attack where 13 journalists lost their lives because two crazy jihadists went inside the building and shot everybody. And there was also a hostage taken in a jewish supermarket in the center of Paris.

Jon Becker: I remember that.

Lionel D. Lio: So this in two or three days interval. So there was first Charlie Hebdo, then there was the hostage taking. But, you know, Brussels and Paris, it's 350 km, so it's nearby. And here they say when it's. When it's raining in Paris, it's just when it's driven in Paris, it's. It will rain in Brussels. So we were. Yeah, we knew something was coming after that, that there were copycats, etc, etcetera.

Now, when you go back to 2014, the 40 guys that were spread over Belgium, there was a cell located in the vervier, in verviers. And our observation platoon were working on them for weeks and months with, of course, following them with technical stuff, cameras, etc. etc. And after the first attacks in Paris, the federal prosecutor told us, told DSU and the group Diane to have a rat on that house in fevrier to take on custody these guys. And that's where this mission begins, in fact.

Jon Becker: So what was the date that you guys actually hit the house?

Lionel D. Lio: We hit the house on the 15th January 2015.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So that's a week after Charlie Hebdo.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, that's a week after Charlie Hebdo, Charlie. Hebdo, I think, was the Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday. We received an order in the weekend and the Monday morning to do some recs, to go and see the place, to be prepared to have a red. And I was lucky. I don't know if it's lucky, but, yes, in my eyes, it's lucky. I was lucky to have this file and to go with my breachers, to have a look to the house, to have the rat on it. I came back, I debrief with my officer.

But you have to know there were two other places in Belgium. There were two places in Brussels and one in Vervier, so we had to do the Retz simultaneously. That was a little bit difficulty because the guys were located. Two of them were located in Vervier in one spot, and two of the same cell were located in Brussels in two other houses. So it's always a little bit an art. And the difficulty to intervene at the same time on different places.

Jon Becker: Oh, for sure. So did you guys know? So Charlie Hebdo happens, the jewish market happens with Koulibaly, and then you're going to hit this house. Was there an established connection between those cells already?

Lionel D. Lio: Honestly, I don't know, but I don't think so. Not a direct connection. There was probably a connection through the coordinator in the Middle east, but there was no really a connection between the guys on the scene. So between Paris and Brussels. But for sure there was a connection between. You named him Coolibali and the guy who was coordinating the things. Because this guy who was coordinating the things, he was coordinating from Athens in Greece.

So he came back from Syria. He was located in Athens in Greece, through you guys, the Americans and the Israelis. And that's why this operation was. It was really an international operation because we had to intervene simultaneously in Belgium, but also in foreign countries in France. Not. We, of course, the Jejune was intervening in France and in Greece, and the Greek colleagues wanted that. They did the house search instead of the Americans on Greek soil. And they've lost him. They've lost the guy ten minutes before the reds. So it's not. I'm not spoiling anything. I'm not saying that's a reality.

And you have to know that guy. I'm not gonna name him, but that guy was the big coordinator, in fact, and it's not a good word for him, but he was the COO, the coordinator of the Paris attacks eight months later in Paris. So he was coordinating. That was a guy with a red sneakers in the subway of Paris coordinating the attacks. That was the same guy.

Jon Becker: So, I mean, just to kind of set context here, what we probably have is there are cells all over France, cells all over Belgium, and probably in other western countries, all independent of one another. So they're not coordinating with each other, but they're coordinating with a central coordinator who's in Athens.

So if you were to think of it as kind of a business, you have a franchise that does the jewish market. You have a franchise that hits the Charlie Hebdo newspaper. You have a franchise in vervier, you have a franchise that's going to plan the Paris operations, and then you have a franchise that's subsequently going to go do the Brussels airport and the attack on the train. And they're all centrally coordinated, but they're not coordinating with one another.

Lionel D. Lio: That's the big picture. I think it's almost correct, what you're telling. I'm not in the file, I'm not in detail on what happened, but that's what they told us, that there was one or two or three, but not many coordinators, and there was really a network above these GlD on our soil.

Jon Becker: But the case, the file that you guys are going to take, your intel unit, your observation unit is working. And after Charlie Hebdo, after the jewish market, the national prosecutor is like, yeah, that's not going to happen here. Go get those guys.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, it was, it was a little, it was clear that those guys were planning something concretely and that it, it was gonna happen in the, in the hours or the days after Charlie Edo. So, of course, there was a little bit, an urgency and a rush to intervene on that, on these guys. That's why we planned and we prepared the redhead and not to go in detail on the mission, but the guy located in Brussels, that was the green light for us.

So to intervene, the guy located in Brussels had to be with the two other guys in verve. That was a green light for us to intervene and to start the raid. Got it. And that happened on Thursday, 15th January 2015. At a certain moment, the observation platoon said, okay, the guy is taking the train to go from Brussels to Liege, etc, etcetera. And we knew it was a point of no return for us. Also, we had to intervene.

So we knew that the guys inside were retronis, that they were heavily armed, because I can say it's not a secret anymore, because before me, some people of some colleagues of the Yererchi revealed that thing that we put some audio systems in the floor of Verveer. There was also a camera filming the entry of the house and of course the live audio. We heard what they were saying to each other, but we heard also that they were manipulating some rifles, et cetera, et cetera. They were also talking to each other. That's maybe not so funny, but a nice to know anecdote. They were talking to each other in Arab, of course, about an ice machine, an ice making machine, so to make some ice cream.

And in the beginning the guy who was translating to the detectives was saying, I don't understand what they are saying because they talk to silently, but they are always talking about an ice machine and an ice cream machine to make some ice, etcetera. And there, there a clever colleague, detective of the federal police, after a few hours that said, but guys, to make TATP. So TATP is a substance to make.

Jon Becker: Suicide vests.

Lionel D. Lio: A suicide vest, that's a substance to make TATP. You have to cool it down. To make it, you have to cool it down. And they made TATP in the ice cream machine to make suicide fest. So we knew before we entered that there was probably 90% chance that there was TATP inside. That's the first thing we knew also that they were manipulating rifles, Kalashnikovs, etcetera, so that they were armed. They were also talking about the fact that when you see the police coming, etcetera, you have to shoot through the door.

When you hear police, you have to shoot through the door. So they were determinated to not surrender or to escape or to fight with us, but not surrendering. That was the picture before a few hours, two days to a few hours before we were entering. You have to know, Verviers is a small town, I think, of 50-60,000 inhabitants in Belgium. It's not a little town with a school, with buses going by with.

That's the difficulty of intervening in such scenario, because when you're intervening, I don't know, in the mountains or in the desert with one house, yeah, you can bomb it and it's okay, but here you have to, you have to take care of, and that's our priority, of course, that's our first priority to take care of civilians.

Moreover, there was next to the door of that, the target house, there was a dance school. So a dancing school, a gymnastic school for young boys and young girls. So we had to intervene also between time frame. Before that the gym school was opened, but also not that night, because the law in Belgium was stipulating at that moment that we cannot enter. We have not a house search warrant between 2100 and 05:00 in the morning. So we had to enter somewhere over there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, after 05:00 a.m. but before the dance school opens. And this is. I mean, this is a. Like a relatively, you know, dense area. Right? It's apartments. It's, you know, multi story apartments. And we can show pictures, obviously, you know, as we do this. But, you know, this is not. This is not like a house with the, you know, five acres around it. These are vertically stacked apartments, like a New York style brownstone where the houses are lined up one right after another. And you have multiple families living in the same buildings.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, that's my point. So you describe it very right. And that is. And that was tactically, technically, but also, moreover, tactically, the difficulty to intervene just in one place without being seen because you have to arrive there incognito, stealth wise, to take place, to set your snipers, to set your breachers, etc., etc., over there in a neighborhood that is sometimes a little bit hostile, also because the neighbors are not always happy to see law enforcement in the neighborhood, etc., etc. So tactically, it was. It was. Yeah, it was difficult.

Jon Becker: So. Okay. Walk me through. They're in basically an apartment, right?

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, they are based on, like you say, like you said, a brown row house. So between other houses divided on four floors, and they were located on the ground floor. So that was maybe our luck a little bit, that they were located on the ground floor. But of course, the priority was that there were no casualties in the civilians in the neighbors so that they couldn't escape and go take and make a hostage situation on the first floor or second floor.

So we had, tactically to prepare ourselves before the intervention. One of the things, and one of – two of the guys, you know, Jon, were there a few hours before to go to the neighbors to ring the bell, just disguised as a plumber and say, hello, we are here because there is a problem. They entered and then they said, yeah, we are police officers. You have to calm down. You have to wait because there is a police operation in a few minutes or in a few hours, and we are here to protect you.

So we set, really a perimeter around the ground floor. We thought that they knew, of course, that we were there stoutly. There were snipers in the back and in the front placed. And then when we had the green light, we arrived with two other teams, my team and another team. So a team, an organic team. In our unit is five men, a team leader and two pairs.

But there, there was another breacher pair plus another. So there were teams of eight and 816 men in the front, plus an officer plus a commando to enter the ground floor. And how. I'm gonna say the idea of the mission was to let explode with light explosive device. A light explosive charge the windows in the front and then have a view in the apartment. Just freeze the apartment. And to do what we call a call out.

So to call out the habitants of the apartment and to come out with their hands up. But of course that's not what happened on the mission. In reality we let explode the windows and we were immediately shot by the three guys inside. So they.

Jon Becker: So let's pause for a second there because I want to go back and make sure that I understand. So you're able to get containment on the apartment from both sides with long gun positions, with sniper positions ahead of time. You guys go into the apartments above, you know, covertly and evacuate those apartments.

So you have vertical and kind of horizontal containment on the apartment before you even begin to execute. They're on the bottom floor. You clear out the floors above, snipers in the front and back. You've got a basically 16 man team in the front that's going to hit. And so you guys decided to do what in the US you would call like a breach and a hold. It's kind of a combination of what we would call contain and call out to. Which is to surround the apartment and call them out.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And breach and hold, which is you're going to use explosive breaching to take the windows out, you know, the two front windows in the apartment. And then use that kind of as an alarm clock for the suspects inside to make them understand that they're at a tactical disadvantage. And then call them out of the apartment.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah.

Jon Becker: What's the layout inside of the apartment? And we can put this up on the screen for the video but for the listener, like describe for me what that apartment, how that apartment is laid out.

Lionel D. Lio: It's not that big. In the front there is a small living room, I think three by 4 meters, something like that connected with a small hallway with a kitchen in it. So maybe 2 meters, 1 meter and a half kitchen, and then afterwards with no doors. So it's the first living room, the kitchen, then a small sleeping room just with two mattresses on the floor where they were sleeping. And then a fourth place that was the bathroom. So just a shower and a sink.

So four places, one after the others, with no door in between. So when you are on the street and you look through the window, you can see the bathroom, I think, maybe 10, 15, 12 meters further.

Jon Becker: So it's basically one big room.

Lionel D. Lio: It's basically one big room divided in more parts.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but are there walls, like, as you're looking through, are there walls separating no bathroom? Or is it just kind of like furniture arrangements?

Lionel D. Lio: No boats. But there are walls between. Of course, the living room is a sort of square. And then you have the kitchen way. It's smaller. So you have a wall in between. Then you have a bigger sleeping room, again with a wall, but there is no door in this wall. So you can see a part of the room, but not everything. And of course, when the shooting begin, they were hiding after the walls, behind the walls. Excuse me.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you guys, you start your execution. You detonate the two breaching charges. And what happens next?

Lionel D. Lio: So immediately after the explosion of the two windows, they shot at us. But when I say Jon, immediately, it was half a second later they shot at us. So our team leader, two of my guys in front of me, the first one was with a ballistic shield, and it was after that the window exploded. He was taking a look, a quick peek inside, but he was immediately shot at him.

So he retreated just a little bit after the concrete, the brick wall. And I was third man, and I saw really the splinters of the wall going against the ballistic helmets of the two guys in front of me. And, you know, you probably already heard the noise, the sound of a Kalashnikov. It's really hard. And it was really resonating everywhere.

We were standing between, of course, the front wall of the house on the street and the parks, the parked cars near after us, behind us. I'm sorry. And you heard just the splinters and the bullets going through the cars that were parked just behind us. So it was really. It was the beginning of, to be honest, of a small war scene, but in a small city, because they were shooting at us with three guys. Not only one, three guys, two Kalashnikovs and one handgun.

Jon Becker: So are they. Are they taking, like. I mean, these are trained fighters. Are they taking volleys of fire where they're, you know, one's reloading while the other one's shooting? Is it a constant stream of fire?

Lionel D. Lio: In the beginning, there were constant shooting. Of course. We replied, we are trained for that and we have the skills for that. We replied, we responded immediately. My team was responding. The guy with the ballistic shield but also the other team was responding because they had the other window, and they had a clearer view because it was straighter through the apartment.

And there were also on the roof of the house next door, there were three snipers looking inside of the room at the other side, at the backside. And they were seeing one of the three terrorists going up and back, and with is Kalashnikov. He was shooting at us, but he didn't knew these terrorists didn't knew that there were colleagues on the roof at the other side. So they neutralized him. I think, on my timeline, I think between – After 15 seconds of the beginning of the shooting, they neutralize the first guy from behind.

Jon Becker: So he's running around thinking he has both cover and concealment. And he has neither.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. Yes, neither. We were seeing only the muzzle flash of the Kalashnikov, but it was a little bit dark. It was January, Athenae, 1700s. It's already dark in Belgium. So we were only seeing the muzzle flash at the. At the other side of the apartment. But we didn't. We didn't saw the. We didn't see the guy at the moment, but he was neutralized, like I said, in the 10 seconds, 15 seconds by the snipers at the roof, but there were still two shooting at us and one washing, hiding, concealed in the bathroom.

So, in the last room of the apartment, and the other one was between the kitchen and where the first one was neutralized through the sleeping room. And he was going up and down, changing from loaders, etc., etc. And in the offensive plan that we made a few days before, because in the unit, we had only a response of rifles, but not of heavier grenades at that moment.

So we demanded at the Jen. The French, the Frenchies to come and support us for that mission in case of. And the case was there. So you received a green light. So two guys of the jean, a sniper of the Jee Jean shot grenades. That's called Raphael grenade. I don't know Raphael Simon, do you know it?

Jon Becker: No.

Lionel D. Lio: It's a grenade. It's a grenade. I think it's 200 grams, 250 grams of explosive. It's also Israeli, mate. And you shoot it from a rifle. So it's a sort of a – It's a grenade with a sting on it. You put it on a rifle, you shoot it and it. It flies away. And when it touches something, it explodes and it's 200 grams. So they….

Jon Becker: Like a breaching grenade. Yeah. I see, like, what it's like. You could. You see teams that'll use them for, for breaching over a distance.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, yeah. I think it's a breaching grenade.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Lionel D. Lio: And we shot two grenades like that in the apartment. And of course 200 grams in an apartment. It's a really big bang, Jon. It's everything. Every 200 grams in 12 m², everything fell apart. The roof fell down, there was heavy fire. It was a blast of an explosion. We were there, maybe, of course we retreated for 20 seconds. The time that the guy shot the grenade, we were standing between cars, so maybe three or 4 meters of the apartment. It was really a blast. It was really very impressive.

So we thought, okay, they're done now. And when we were going back to have a check inside the apartment, of course, from the outside with a ballistic shield, one of the guys survived the blast and was still shooting at us.

Jon Becker: Amazing!

Lionel D. Lio: Yes, it was really amazing. No, probably. Of course he was lethally shot at that moment, or lethally injured. Probably he would have died in the 30 seconds or 1 minute, but at that moment he was still alive. He lied. He was lying on his Kalashnikov, and when he saw one of my guys turning around with his ballistic helmet, he shot at him. It's really unbelievable.

Jon Becker: And did you then return fire to that guy?

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, of course he was finished on that moment, you have to know, on that moment, the house was also burning because of the grenade, the explosion. It is an old building, an old house with much wooden floors, etc, etcetera. And it was really, really, really burning. We also. That's also one of the anecdotes. We demanded the fire department to come extinguish the fire, but they never came. We had to do it by ourselves because they said, yeah, we're not paid to extinguish fires in war zones. So we did, we really, we did it. Another team came and took the water, I don't know, what do you call it, the water thing?

Jon Becker: The fire extinguishers or fire hose.

Lionel D. Lio: No, the fire hose. Really. The truck was parked, I think, 150 meters further, and they just took the fire hose. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So that's a recurring theme around the world. Firemen are always smart enough to not go into these situations.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, indeed, indeed. They're not paid for that. And so that was the second down, and the third one was hiding in the bathroom behind the building. And due to the smoke of the fire, etcetera, it cannot, he can't resist and stay in the bathroom anymore. So he jumped through the roof at the backside of the building, and there was one of the teams concealed there, and they just took him on custody. So he survived. He survived the rat afterwards.

For the anecdote, Jon, he always claimed and said that he was there just to say hi to these guys, to take a shower. And he didn't knew these were. Of course he didn't knew they were retronis, etc., etc.

Jon Becker: He's just visiting a friend.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, he was just visiting his friends and he was surprised. etc., etc. Meanwhile and that's our problem, of course. But just to give you a perspective of how justice is working in Europe, and moreover in Belgium, he was the guy that survived this thing. He was condemned to 16 years afterwards. In appeal, he was condemned to twelve years. Only twelve years.

I think if you do something like that in America, in the USA, you stay for 800 years in prison. And to do it better like that. But he was condemned for twelve years. And because he had a good behavior, he was relieved. Now, in December, 2 months ago.

Jon Becker: Oh, good!

Lionel D. Lio: Really, that's the good part for him. The bad part for us is that the family of the two guys that were shot there, the two jihadists, they are prosecuting us, not only me, but my colleagues, also, for manslaughter, etc, etc. And that is still running against us. That's the reality.

Jon Becker: So they're suing you.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, they're suing you because they are saying that we, that this was a dead squadron, that we executed these guys, etc., etc.

Jon Becker: Got it. And all of the AK-47 rounds and the cars in front and all of that, that was probably just a coincidence.

Lionel D. Lio: That's a coincidence. These guys were just victims of the police and etc., etc. That never.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. They're just, just students trying to make ice cream in their apartment.

Lionel D. Lio: Something like that.

Jon Becker: So, so, subsequently, what do you – What did the investigators find after the fact, inside of the apartment?

Lionel D. Lio: Well, of course, several guns, rifles, ammos, etc., etc. I think five or six different. They found, if I'm not wrong, 15 kilos of TATP to make a bomb jacket. They found police uniforms. So, afterwards, the investigators, the detectives, presumed that these guys were planning a sort of amok something, a riot on a police station disguised as police officer something. Sorry, something like that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Similar to what we saw in Norway with the guy that dressed up as a cop.

Lionel D. Lio: Exactly. Yeah, something, something like that.

Jon Becker: So, 15 kilos of TATP is a pretty decent amount of explosives. And, you know, of note to the listener is TATP. Is the explosive of choice that we use was used in the Paris attacks. It was used in the Brussels attack. You know that that is the terrorists explosive of choice. So that's probably not a coincidence.

Lionel D. Lio: No. And because it's – It is, it was. And it is still easy to make. It's not really stable. It's pretty dangerous to make it. But once that it's made, it's stable and you can just handle it and put it in your pockets or whatever in a rucksack and going. And to detonate it. That's another anecdote. During the listenings of the live audio, the investigators were also remarking that the guys were talking about Christmas lights.

So you know, just Christmas lights were put in a Christmas tree, etc., etc. And they didn't understand because yeah, these guys were Muslims and Christmas lights, Christmas tree didn't match with their religion. It's afterwards seen afterwards. These Christmas lights were also found in the apartment to serve as detonator in the TATP. That's also how they made the bomb jackets and how they detonated the bomb jackets for the Paris attacks eight months later.

So when you have TATP and we are not spoiling anything, you find these everywhere also in the press, etcetera. It's not a secret what I'm telling you now, because sometimes people say, you can say that, but it's everywhere. When you go on Internet, you see how they make it.

So the TATP is putting, it's like a little bit hard jelly. They put it in their pockets, they take the Christmas lights that they just push in the TATP and they take nine volt battery, they take the wires of the Christmas light, you put it on the night formal batteries and it detonates. That's how they made it for the Brussels attacks, for the Paris attacks and how they would have done it for the vervier.

Jon Becker:

So they had AK-47s handguns, 15 kilos of TATP, Christmas lights. I don't know what else they needed for their operation, but it sounds like they were pretty close.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, they were really, really really close. There were also, we've heard that on the live audio, they were also constantly praying and talking to each other, that it was the last day that they were convinced of what they were going to do. Also praising the attacks in Paris one week before that, that there were. That the two guys were heroes, that they going, that were going to whatever where it is with the 72 virgins etc., etc. So it was obvious that these guys were executing. Going to execute something in the hours that were going.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The problem with all these things is you never know when to intervene. Right? You never know. How many steps do they have to take before you intervene? And it sounds like you guys got them just before they went out and engaged. And you look at what happens before with Charlie Hebdo in the jewish market, and after with Paris and Brussels. And from where I said, it looks like you guys stopped what could have been a really catastrophic terrorist attack.

Lionel D. Lio: Yes, I think so. Now, almost ten years afterwards, nine years afterwards, when you re-evaluating the things and with the feedback, etcetera, yes, I think we've just stopped something big catastrophe. But, you know, on the moment, we are an intervention unit, intervention team. We are just executing. We receive a plan, we receive a briefing, we try to execute it for it best, and then we go on and we go to something else.

And I'm gonna say everything before and afterwards, it's not really our business. There are other people, probably other colleagues much cleverer and smarter than what we are to evaluate, to, etc. Etc. We're there just to execute and go on.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but I think, you know, when you look at lessons learned from this operation, one of the lessons learned has to be that the system actually worked. Right. Like the system actually worked in this case. They took intelligence that they gathered from foreign countries. You know, they ran the surveillance, they did the homework, you know, they handed it off to you guys, you guys planned it and executed it flawlessly.

You know, I mean, this is one of those few times that we actually stopped it ahead of time because of intelligence and because of investigation, you know, genuinely good police work. And I think that's got to be one of the lessons learned, is sometimes the system works and if everybody plays their role, you know, this is the result.

Lionel D. Lio: Absolutely, Jon. Of course. It's like I like to say it also because I'm always talking about my perspective, my point of view, because I can talk about the other guys, other colleagues, but I can only talk from the intervention unit. But before that and after that, there are tens and maybe hundreds of other colleagues and intel colleagues and foreign colleagues from France, from, from the US, from, from Israel, from, from Germany that were working on this file. So it's really, it's a huge, huge, big things, big thing too. It's not, we are the finalization, what you see, of course, and every, every, everything is as much as important as the other thing. I'm sure it's really a team play from the beginning to the end.

And most of the time when you see in history, when it fails somewhere or when you cannot stop it, it's when one of the things of the chain is not working or not doing his job properly. But here everybody was working well. Everybody was motivated, everybody was disciplined from the beginning to the end. And like I said, it didn't stop there.

In fact, Vervier, of course, Charlie Hebdo. But our intervention in vervier was, if you see it now, it was just the beginning of an era. During two years, more than two years in Europe, where there were terrorist attacks, like in the Middle East, but in the center of Europe. Yeah, it was a little bit preliminary of something that was coming.

And honestly, we knew that. We knew that between brackets. We felt that, the colleagues felt that, the investigators felt that. But the politics almost in Belgium were happy that we stopped this in January and in March, they were forgotten that, and everything was forgotten. And six months later, there were the Paris attacks, which, you know.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Which we actually covered with, with one of the BRI operators who, you know, in a prior episode. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think you guys made a lot of really good decisions here. Right? I mean, the decision to evacuate the apartment above this very easily could have been either the grenades might have killed the people above, or you would have been prevented from using them because you had people above.

I think getting ahead of the operation and evacuating, quietly evacuating the apartments above was a really good decision because you opened up your tactical options, setting surveillance, setting long gun positions before the operation, I think, was a really good decision because it, you know, in the case of the guy in the back of the house with the Kalashnikov, that is how he was neutralized. Right? It's another instance where you guys were ahead of them operationally in time. And at the point that they began to fire, you had an option already configured.

Lionel D. Lio: No, absolutely. Here also, I have to say, sometimes you have also, you have to be lucky between brackets. And here we were lucky that the time that we received to prepare the operation was relatively big. So we had the order, I think, Sunday evening or Monday afternoon, Monday morning, and we had two or three days, so we had to be ready. But meanwhile, we could sharpen the mission. We could think about other things. We brainstormed with almost all of the guys of the intervention unit. What do you think if then else, if we do that, we can do that if they do that.

So that's the opportunity that we received that is that we had the chance to prepare everything in time. And sometimes you have to be lucky. So that was the luck that we had, because one of the possibilities was also, you have to know, what if one of the two guys, because they were also always located with two inside, but what if one of the two guys is coming outside while we are interview just before, maybe 30 seconds before we intervene, he is going outside to go to the night shop for cigarettes or for a beer. They don't drink beer. For whatever. What do you do?

So we had also guys on duty just after the – Behind the corner to intervene on this guy, to put him away, and then to execute the rats in the house, etc. So every scenario was thought about and reflected about and brainstormed to be sure that it was really waterproof and that there was no escape for these guys. The pressure was very high on us because you can imagine, if you begin such a mission and you lose one or two of the three guys, that's not good for your reputation. So you have to be really sure that it's waterproof.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's a very interesting preparation that you did to have a team to s***** somebody if by chance, they just walked out to get a cigarette, and now they see you and they're in the middle of the thing. So that's – It just strikes me that you guys really thought about every possibility that I picture you sitting around a table going, okay, well, what if this happens? Okay, well, what if this happens? Just, like, murdering your own operation ahead of time and trying to figure out everything that could go wrong? Is that kind of what you did?

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah. And I have to say that that's a little bit the. I'm gonna say the philosophy, but also the. The success that we booked through the years and the efficacy of the. Of the unit, of the group Dian, because every, every mission is an important mission. There is no small thing. There is no small mission. There is no small house search or something. Everything is important. And we don't like to. We like to win. We love to win. We don't like to lose. And we are already. That's really the philosophy. For 300% prepared on everything, it can go wrong.

There is no acceptance of just routine or just. Yeah, we are unlucky today. It's not possible. You cannot brainstorm like that. Everything has to be really. Yeah, that's our philosophy. I think it's probably the mindset of many special forces group and special units groups in the world, but in our unit, it's really one of the quotes and the mottos of the living and operational things. It has to be perfectly executed.

You cannot let…. How do you say it in English? I don't know how you say, but you cannot let the things go and say, okay, we will see. We will see how it happens. No, it's all always in before, you know, and I know too much plan skills, the plan, that's the difficulty also to have a balance between. You cannot give a briefing. I gave there a briefing for almost 60 colleagues. You cannot give a briefing and have a plan A, B, C, D, E until Z. It's impossible because it's the, the mission is too complicated and has to be too accurate to have different plans. You can have a plan E, plan A, and then maybe B and C, and then it stops. But you have to have thought about everything. That's the thing.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it goes to collaborative decision making, right? It's sitting down with the unit or the team and collaborating on what the plan is going to be and what the potential contingencies are, and then solving the contingencies beforehand. Right? There could be a guy that comes out, well, that doesn't require a separate plan, it just requires a unit to handle that if it happens.

It's one of the things that struck me when we first talked about this and when I talked about this operation with other guys in your unit, washing how much thought went into beforehand, all the possible outcomes, and trying to solve for every variable, you could, you know, you say it pays to be lucky, but I also think that luck favors the prepared, of course. Right?

I think the more you plan, the more you think through it, of course, the more able you are to respond to, you know, the guy just opened fires on you when the breaching charge goes off. What made you guys think to bring Zhejiang and have a grenade capability? What was the thinking behind that?

Lionel D. Lio: Well, during the days before, when we were brainstorming, that was one of the plans, but also one of the issues, because at the front side, at the street side, we couldn't see inside of the apartment. There were curtains hanging after the window, but we didn't knew if they were barricading something. Maybe they had put a closet after the window, or maybe like they do in the Middle east, you know, they put some wooden panel afterwards or something.

So we were a little bit concerned by the fact that if we just breach the window by hand, mechanically, or even by explosive, because by explosive, you have to know, and you know that probably, Jon, it's 15, 20 grams that you put on the window. And it's – That's it. But if you put something else behind the curtains, these 15 grams won't blow away what's behind the curtain. So that was our concern. To think, what if we blow off the window by breaching and there is something else after the curtain.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Lionel D. Lio: And one. And one of the possibilities was then, yes, if there is something else, you have to demand or take the order of the commando, the green light and the Zhejiang will shoot a grenade inside to blow away what's after the curtain. That was a little bit the philosophy, but here, in this case, like I told you, it wasn't like that. We had a direct view inside.

But honestly, the breaching grenade was also meant a little bit as offensive grenade. In case of what in fact happened that day, in case of that, we didn't immediately had the, how do you say, the possession of the situation. And we felt, of course, we are special units, and of course we stay cool, et cetera.

But with the experience, in 2 or 3 seconds, you know, in a mission, if you have the overhand of the situation or not, you feel that it's the experience. You go inside, you see how the targets react, how is the situation harder, colleagues, etcetera. And here, I think everybody on scene knew after 2 seconds that it was also with what we knew before.

But on the scene, yeah, we were, during a few seconds accumulated, so it was immediately a fire thing. They were immediately shooting at us, and that's why we demanded to shoot a grenade inside the apartment.

Jon Becker: I think another lesson learned has to be the relationship between you and Zhejiang, right? A lot of Americans don't know that there is a cooperation between the european counterterror teams called the Atlas group, that you guys are getting together and you're training together, and you're working together, and it's not. You're close enough. Living in the US, we tend to think in really large geography.

But like you said, you're 2 hours from Paris, so there is this cross border problem. And I think that the relationships between your unit and Zhejiang has to be one of your beneficial lessons learned here is knowing the knowing the teams around you expands your capabilities, because they brought a capability that you didn't have.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, of course, at that moment, we didn't have that device, that capability to intervene. And like you said, the Atlas platform. The European Atlas platform is really, initially it was created more for data exchange, etc, knowledge exchange. But nowadays, you see that we have cooperation in between countries. Like you said, we have once or two, twice a year exercises on boats in the Atlantic with the Norwegians, with the swedish guys, with the Finns, with the danish guys for hostage rescue, on boats, on planes with the Frenchies, with the Spanish.

So yeah, there is a connection. It's also good for network, good for exchange, good for just to talk about missions, to talk about new gear, to talk about everything, just to make each other better.

Jon Becker: I mean, in the end, what Atlas does is it makes every team in the Atlas group better.

Lionel D. Lio: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we are working on the same thing. We are working on the same guys because these guys are traveling between, you know, the two of the trees that we caught in verviers. They came from, of course, from the Middle East, but they were passing through France, the UK, the other one to the UK, Germany, Netherlands. So you, so it's really a dynamic thing and we have to work together to catch these guys.

Jon Becker: Was there anything, when you went back and debriefed the operation, was there anything that changed your training or changed your gear or anything after this operation where you were like up, we should have done this, or we need to be prepared for this?

Lionel D. Lio: First of all, we were lesser naive, I think, because until then it was a little bit, you know, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, we were an anti terror unit, but we had never had, yeah, of course we had some shootings and some barricaded men and some hostage rescue and some files with a little bit of a logistic terror thing, but not really that huge. And that was a wake up call for us. Maybe a little bit less for us, the operational guys, but more for the hierarchy and maybe for the politics to wake up call to say it's not only in Syria or in Afghanistan that this is happening, it's also happening in Europe. You have to give us some credits, some gear, some material, some new colleagues that we can intervene in the future.

That was one of the lessons learned. A big lesson learned also. That is, that's also a difficulty. These guys, these terrorists are not, these are not gangsters. You know, we caught, in my career, I've got maybe 100 gangsters, top gangsters in Europe, in Belgium, big guys, really big guys, mob guys, drug cartels, etcetera.

But these guys are at a certain point, they are the sometimes also crazy, but at a certain point, their life are also the first stay still important. These terrorists, they are crazy. They are brainwashed. Their life, their own life is nothing. They know and they want to die. And someone who is willing to die, very difficult to work on him. It's a different perspective. It's a different aspect. You have to work differently on someone who is convinced that he's gonna die in the few hours or the several days that is following.

So for us, it was a different approach to recognize these guys and to execute the mission maybe in a slightly different tactical way, because your opponent, your enemy is thinking otherwise and is acting otherwise.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think implicit in kind of normal human interaction is the assumption that we all want to continue to live. And I think that one of the things that makes these terrorist incidents, and it's common to all of them, every debrief I've sat through, every debrief I've done, it is common to all of them that these guys want to die, and that when you don't care if you survive the operation, it changes your tactics substantially.

Lionel D. Lio: That's my point. Yeah, that's my point. But that's the difficulty. That's really the difficulty, because you have to concerned on way other points than normal enemies, normal gangsters, normally clients that you. You have to take in custody because these. These guys want to die. And, yes, nothing to lose.

And tactically, it's really for the law enforcers that are looking at your podcast or in your podcast. You have to think about that. How would I react tactically and technically if I'm confronted with someone who is willing to die, but really willing to die? Wanting to die, wanting to die. It's a really different approach. And that was one. I think it was a good wake up call, but it was also a good thing to think about. We reset the tactics, some tactics, but also the point of view.

And afterwards, and that's not the secret. Neither. We were more to work with drones, also to explore things with drones, to do recce with drones, to work afterwards with drones, etc, crawlers. That until 2015, it was really, really, really the beginning of the tactical drone scene and entering somewhere with drones, etc, when your team.

Jon Becker: Your team was one of the first in the world to use drones. I mean, the sky hero Loki, that has become kind of the worldwide standard for drones, was developed with, you know, Eve Scopia and DSU at then Dion, like, your unit was the reason that that thing came into being. So I think that's, you know, and that that is rooted in these kinds of operations.

Lionel D. Lio: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely true. Brainstorming through, discussing. Through analyzing the things and to be confronted with some situation that we weren't confronted with before. So what if. Yeah, maybe if you can send. What, the dog? No, the dog would be killed and the dog can't fly. Or I. Maybe we have to make a drone. Yeah, drone. And that's how effectively Skyhero, approximately was created through some guys of our group.

Jon Becker: Yeah, no, yeah, I know the guys and I know the process. Well. Look, Lio, this has been fantastic. I totally appreciate you sitting down with me and sharing this op. I mean, it is nothing. And obviously, this problem has not gone away. This threat has not gone away. This operation, although it occurred in 2015, could occur in 2024 just as easily in Belgium or in the US. And I think there's a lot of lessons learned here that I appreciate you sharing with our audience and congratulations on a successful op and a successful career, my friend.

Lionel D. Lio: Thank you very much! Thank you to have me on your fantastic podcast, Jon!

Very honored that I could speak, of course, for myself, but for my colleagues that are still working, these are really, really heroes in the shadow. They are working behind the curtains. Always low profile. These guys are doing really great, a big, great job. And of course, not only in Belgium, everywhere, but very honored to have represented them tonight.

Thank you!