Federal Police Special Units

Directorate of the special units of the federal police (Dutch: Directie van de speciale eenheden; French: Direction des unités spéciales)
Former SIE/ESI logo, featuring Diana. The current logo is identical, apart from the unit name: the abbreviation "DSU" at the top and "POLICE FEDERALE POLITIE" at the bottom.
Country	Belgium
Branch	Belgian Federal Police
Type	Paramilitary force
Role	Counter-Terrorism, high-risk emergency response, specialized operations and tactics
Size	540 operators (50 in the intervention unit)

The Directorate of special units (DSU) (Dutch: Directie van de speciale eenheden; French: Direction des unités spéciales; German: Direktion der Sondereinheiten) is the Belgian Federal Police's Counter-Terrorism and SWAT unit. In total, DSU consists of about 500 highly trained police officers. The centralized 50 operator small assault team of the intervention unit of the DSU is deployed in cases of terrorism, kidnappings, hostage taking and other forms of serious crime. DSU performs emergency responses, high-risk arrests and searches, obeservation operations, undercover operations and more.

Chief commissioner Eric Liévin, one of the DSU's former commanders, states that "a criminal dealing with the DSU, has a better chance of surviving than another; they try to use a minimal level of violence/force, and yet try to attain a maximum level of efficiency."

The original DSU was created within the former Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie in the aftermath of the Munich massacre and was called Group Diane.

In 1974 the name was changed from Diane to SIE (also outside Belgium, Dutch: Speciaal Interventie Eskadron) or ESI (French: Escadron spécial d'intervention, also known as Groupe interforces antiterroriste).

In 2001, all Belgian police forces (municipal, judicial and Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie) were reformed into the integrated police structured on two levels, the local police and the federal police. The SIE/ESI took the form of the Directorate of special units (DSU), which was part of the newly created federal police. In 2007 the DSU was integrated into the Office of the General Commissioner (CG) and its name was changed to CGSU. Due to an optimization reform within the federal police that started in 2014, the special units were moved from the Office of the General Commissioner to the General directorate of the judicial police (DGJ), one of the three general directorates resorting under the Office of the General Commissioner. This was deemed more logical because of the operational and judicial nature of the assignments of the federal police's special units. Subsequently, the name and abbreviation was changed (back) to "Directorate of the special units (DSU)".