THE long running investigation into Belgium's most intractable political scandal the unsolved assassination six years ago of Andre Cools, the country's former deputy prime minister - took a new turn yesterday as a court unexpectedly ordered the release of a former minister accused of complicity in his murder.
A court in Liege released Mr Alain Van der Biest (56), a former pensions minister in the national government and interior minister in the French speaking Wallonian regional government, who had spent nearly four months in prison following his arrest in September.
The decision seems likely to fuel renewed public disquiet over the workings of the Belgian police and judicial systems and the role of political patronage. Many Belgians believe this has bedevilled the search for Cools's murderers, since he was shot outside his mistress's apartment in July 1991.
The killers, who appeared to have been professional assassins, recruited in Sicily, escaped from the scene on a motor cycle.
The Cools assassination continues to have widespread repercussions on Belgian political life, especially in the uncovering of widespread graft and corruption in the form of illicit payments to the country's Wallonian and Flemish Socialist parties in return for military contracts.
The discovery of the payments following the investigation of party activities arising out of the murder has so far led to the downfall of three national government ministers and the enforced resignation of Mr Willy Claes, another former minister who had gone on to become secretary general of NATO.
The sudden arrests of Mr Van der Biest and several former colleagues, shortly after the country's convulsion in the wake of its paedophile scandal, helped to undermine confidence in the authorities.
Yesterday Mr Van der Biest, a former political protege of Cools, was released after an application by his lawyer, Mr Jean Luc Dessy, that there was insufficient evidence in connection with the murder to merit continued detention, although the charges against him remain.
Mr Van der Biest, a former lecturer in literature, has been under suspicion of involvement in the assassination almost since it happened. He had fallen out with Cools in the months before the shooting, but had previously avoided arrest in what became a surprisingly lacklustre police investigation.
Mr Van der Biest, whose career was on the slide because of a public drink problem, had incautiously announced a month before the murder that Cools had become mad and "it's going to end in shooting", but police have failed to prove he knew of any conspiracy in advance.