Jean-Michel Systermans had once stood where the young lawyers were meant to gather that morning. A practicing attorney in Liege, he had represented some of the city's arms dealers before his career collapsed. In 1980, the Conseil de l'Ordre suspended him. Conviction for embezzlement followed, then forgery. His fall from the profession was total and humiliating. The bombing was not the random violence of terrorists with political demands; it was a calculated act of vengeance against the legal system that had expelled him. The target was chosen for maximum symbolic impact: the seat of justice itself, filled with those who had judged him and those who would inherit the profession that had cast him out.

It took eighteen months to find him. On June 16, 1987, authorities discovered three additional bombs in a bank vault registered under Systermans' name. The discovery led to his arrest. Under interrogation, Systermans confessed to the Palais de Justice bombing, accepting responsibility for the destruction and for Philippe Balis's death. His accomplice, Francis Reynders, was also taken into custody. The investigation revealed a man whose resentments had festered for years, whose legal training had been turned toward planning an attack on the institution he blamed for his ruin. The bombs in the bank vault suggested the December 1985 attack may not have been intended as his last.

In 1991, a Belgian court sentenced Jean-Michel Systermans to death for manslaughter. It was a verdict from another era. Belgium had not executed anyone since 1950, and the death penalty existed on the books more as historical artifact than practical punishment. The sentence was later commuted to imprisonment. Francis Reynders received a life sentence for his role as accomplice. For nearly a decade, Systermans remained behind bars, the former lawyer now permanently separated from the profession he had once practiced. In 2000, he was released on parole from the detention center, an old man whose act of revenge had cost one young student his future and damaged a building that had stood for four centuries.

The Palais de Justice has served as Liege's courthouse since the 16th century, its stone walls witnessing centuries of legal proceedings, political upheavals, and the ordinary business of justice. The 1985 bombing damaged but did not destroy it. Repairs restored the collapsed ceilings and damaged floors. The swearing-in ceremonies continued, new lawyers taking their oaths in the same halls where one of their predecessors had tried to bring the entire edifice down. Philippe Balis's death serves as a reminder that the violence that sometimes punctuated Belgium's troubled 1980s could emerge from unexpected directions, from grievances that had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with personal ruin.